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Firefox is getting language translation

zdnet.com

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Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#81

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

dredmorbius wrote: post #78
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more exotic language pairs I've found that sometimes what Google does for these is translate from Language A > English, and then English > Language B, which leads to bizarre results.

From reports, Google Translate has effectively created its own internal (AI GD ML) metalanguage, which can interpolate between languages it's not been specifically trained on. E.g., with Japanese English and Korean English, Google Translate can manage Japanese Korean, without being specifically trained to do so. So yes, there's an intermediary language. But it's not English. https://www.newscientist.com/article/21147…

It seems to be 'fixed' now, but once I was trying to translate from Hindi to Nepali (which are actually closely-related languages, think Italian and Spanish) with a simple sentence along the lines 'Ram came', where 'Ram' is a common Hindu name (effectively: 'John'), written in Devanagari with a long vowel: राम (rām).

And I gave the Hindi input in devanagari (राम आ गया), but still the Nepali translation ended up being the equivalent of 'the sheep came' (भेडा आयो), so somewhere along the line it seemed to be treating the name राम (rām) as equivalent to the English string 'ram' and translating accordingly.

So if the intermediate language isn't English, it certainly has some English-like properties....

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#82

Post by fimdomeio »

When implementing this please take into account that sometimes people are ok with reading content in another language.

I don't use chrome that much so maybe it's a configuration thing I never looked into, but the nagging bar asking me if I want to translate every single english page is very annoying. Not a native english speaker but confortable enough to never need the page translated.

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#83

Post by TuringTest »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #65
distances wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, I never felt that the translation is off, or terrible, and if not better in some cases, it's as good as Google Translator. In my experience Deepl is consistently, without fail, considerably better than Google Translate. I basically use Google now only for more exotic language pairs, or full-page translations.

For Spanish, at least, it definitely isn't better than Google. And recently everything I had to look up while reading Gabriel García Márquez, DeepL didn't know. After enough failures I gave up and returned to Google Translate for the remainder of the book.

Google may have a wider range of words, but DeepL is definitely much better in grammar and idioms, which Google tends to translate literally.

Moreover, Google often provides a single target word; whereas DeepL allows you to select from a range of synonyms clicking on a word, and will adjust the sentence accordingly to use the new word. When Google gets the context wrong and provides the wrong meaning for the translation, DeepL's capability to translate with a different meaning is invaluable.

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#84

Post by mehdix »

amirmasoudabdol wrote: post #4

While this is great, I like to give a shout out to DeepL Translator [1]. I'm not affiliated with them but I like to recommend them to people who like to step out of Google ecosystem. I am using DeepL for about a year now and I mostly use it for NL EN, DE EN. So far, I never felt that the translation is off, or terrible, and if not better in some cases, it's as good as Google Translator. [1]: https://www.deepl.com/tra…

I was also looking for a Google alternative and recently discoverd them on pons.com and am very happy with the results which are often DE EN.

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#85

Post by Aeolun »

mrweasel wrote: post #52
Aeolun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, I know I have a Danish IP, and my language settings is British English, but just give me the original Swedish version of the content it's FINE. Given these settings, how would you expect the browser to know you want to see the Swedish content? You have explicitly indicated that you want British English (if available).

Because it's very much site dependent what language I want. I don't expect the browser to transmit ANY kind of language information to the site. For instance I never want the Danish version of Wikipedia, but I do want the Danish version of a Danish news site, or the Swedish version of a Swedish website. There's no real way to indicate those preferences to the browser, so it would be best if it never try to deal with…

If you have exceptions for certain websites, isn’t it still better for the browser to tell the website in the 90% of other cases?

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#86

Post by dredmorbius »

bzbarsky wrote: post #80
dredmorbius wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From reports, Google Translate has effectively created its own internal (AI GD ML) metalanguage, which can interpolate between languages it's not been specifically trained on. E.g., with Japanese English and Korean English, Google Translate can manage Japanese Korean, without being specifically trained to do so. So yes, there's an intermediary language. But it's not English. https://www.newscientist.com/article/21147…

The intermediary language is not English, but due to the way the training set is constructed (pairs of texts in various languages, with the vast majority of pairs having English as one of the languages, is my understanding) it can be very hard to tell apart from English sometimes. For example, translating "рубанок" ("plane", in the sense of the carpenter's tool) from Russian to Polish used to produce "samolot" ("airp…

That's almost certainly accurate. The metalanguage / interlingua isn't English, but being based on A English and B English training, is all but certainly influenced by English grammar, words, and idioms, in ways that direct A B training would not be.

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#87

Post by vinay427 »

Yessing wrote: post #41
amirmasoudabdol wrote: post #4

While this is great, I like to give a shout out to DeepL Translator [1]. I'm not affiliated with them but I like to recommend them to people who like to step out of Google ecosystem. I am using DeepL for about a year now and I mostly use it for NL EN, DE EN. So far, I never felt that the translation is off, or terrible, and if not better in some cases, it's as good as Google Translator. [1]: https://www.deepl.com/tra…

During a C1 German course I took, I tried writing an essay In English, using deepl and then submitting it to the teacher. Only manual thing done is choosing the correct alternative from the list of words deepl gives you. The Teacher said that it was amazing and that many native students she had couldn't write that well.

This seems really quite variable. The second sentence I tried DE->EN ended up with an awkward and confusing literal translation of a phrase that Google Translate handled well.

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#88

Post by [deleted] »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #65
distances wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, I never felt that the translation is off, or terrible, and if not better in some cases, it's as good as Google Translator. In my experience Deepl is consistently, without fail, considerably better than Google Translate. I basically use Google now only for more exotic language pairs, or full-page translations.

For Spanish, at least, it definitely isn't better than Google. And recently everything I had to look up while reading Gabriel García Márquez, DeepL didn't know. After enough failures I gave up and returned to Google Translate for the remainder of the book.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox is getting language translation

#89

Post by smnrchrds »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #75
distances wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, I never felt that the translation is off, or terrible, and if not better in some cases, it's as good as Google Translator. In my experience Deepl is consistently, without fail, considerably better than Google Translate. I basically use Google now only for more exotic language pairs, or full-page translations.

> more exotic language pairs I've found that sometimes what Google does for these is translate from Language A > English, and then English > Language B, which leads to bizarre results.

I have noticed that too. When translation libre from French to Azerbaijani, it gave the Azerbaijani word for free as in free of charge, rather than free as in freedom. That is an ambiguity that is mostly limited to English, maybe some other languages, but definitely neither French nor Azerbaijani.
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