Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No Language Left Behind

ai.facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 166 posts

Re: No Language Left Behind

#121

Post by jhugo »

Groxx wrote: post #112

> REAL-WORLD APPLICATION > Translating Wikipedia for everyone Hmmm. While there is very definitely utility in doing things like this, I do kinda fear "poisoning the well"-like effects of feeding (even partially-) AI-generated-data into extremely common AI-data-sources. There's some info on it in a blog post[1] and the MediaWiki "Content translation" page[2], but does anyone know of any studies on the quality of the t…

Yeah, I really hope they don't do this. I live in a country where I don't speak the language well, so I am using Google Translate and DeepL [0] all day every day. The quality of translations of real-world text is so incredibly variable. There is literally no way to know when it will suddenly reverse the meaning of a sentence, or produce something that sounds like it makes sense, but in terms of meaning bears no relation to the input at all.

A machine-translated Wikipedia would not be a trustworthy source of information at all, yet would look like one. I think that does significantly more harm than good.

[0] Suggestions for better alternatives welcomed.

Re: No Language Left Behind

#122

Post by albertzeyer »

jefftk wrote: post #97
albertzeyer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really remember the exact numbers anymore, but covering only the top 5 languages will cover maybe 40% of the world population, while covering the top 200 languages (many of them low resource) will cover maybe 90% of the world population. Some numbers (but you can not exactly infer from them such accumulated numbers): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num... Some more numbers from here:…

It doesn't sound like you're considering that people are very often fluent in a major language in addition to their regional one?

I am. That's why I mentioned that you can not infer my statements directly from the numbers you find on Wikipedia etc. You can not simply add up those numbers.

Re: No Language Left Behind

#123

Post by mellavora »

pmontra wrote: post #118
Gigachad wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm hoping that globalisation prunes out as many languages as possible before we end up with brain implants automatically translating everything for us and no one can communicate without these chips.

Becoming bilingual is one thing. Completely extinguishing a language is a totally different matter. It is usually associated with migrating away from the geographic area of the language and/or physically losing speakers (old age, wars, genocides, etc.) You can check the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_e... To make an example and be blunt: I do not expect any European country officia…

So, Ukrainian?

Re: No Language Left Behind

#124

Post by eCa »

Gigachad wrote: post #107
azinman2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if we don't work on it, it's not gonna happen. That’s exactly right. There’s too much bias in society that if something isn’t perfect, then why bother? Nothing is perfect, so with that attitude there can be no progress. Thank you for doing important work!

Personally I'm hoping that globalisation prunes out as many languages as possible before we end up with brain implants automatically translating everything for us and no one can communicate without these chips.

> prunes out as many languages as possible

Would you feel the same way if that includes all languages you know, including all versions of English?

Re: No Language Left Behind

#125

Post by cyphar »

pmontra wrote: post #118
Gigachad wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm hoping that globalisation prunes out as many languages as possible before we end up with brain implants automatically translating everything for us and no one can communicate without these chips.

Becoming bilingual is one thing. Completely extinguishing a language is a totally different matter. It is usually associated with migrating away from the geographic area of the language and/or physically losing speakers (old age, wars, genocides, etc.) You can check the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_e... To make an example and be blunt: I do not expect any European country officia…

There are several reasons a language can go extinct, and while the reasons you mentioned are included there are several other reasons that you didn't consider. The most common way language death occurs is through contact with a prestige language, which results in social pressure that makes the non-prestige language become less and less commonly spoken[1]. A community becoming bilingual is part of this process -- it doesn't always result in language death, but it is an early stage of that form of language death.

As for a European country official language (strange line to draw), Icelandic is already in a state where younger Icelandic natives speak to each other in English because smartphones do not support their native language. It is entirely possible that Icelandic will be in danger of extinction this century[2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3qbYFvOHwk [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/europe/iceland-icel...

Re: No Language Left Behind

#126

Post by Gigachad »

eCa wrote: post #124
Gigachad wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm hoping that globalisation prunes out as many languages as possible before we end up with brain implants automatically translating everything for us and no one can communicate without these chips.

> prunes out as many languages as possible Would you feel the same way if that includes all languages you know, including all versions of English?

Yes, I’d be happy to learn a new language if it was the step to one unified language. Of course there is no way to back that up since it will never happen but I at least assume I’d do it if that was the case.

Re: No Language Left Behind

#127

Post by debesyla »

Groxx wrote: post #112

> REAL-WORLD APPLICATION > Translating Wikipedia for everyone Hmmm. While there is very definitely utility in doing things like this, I do kinda fear "poisoning the well"-like effects of feeding (even partially-) AI-generated-data into extremely common AI-data-sources. There's some info on it in a blog post[1] and the MediaWiki "Content translation" page[2], but does anyone know of any studies on the quality of the t…

On top of that - a lot of language specific content has to include sources in that same language.

(As an example, it would be absurd for lithuanian wikipedia to include sources in japanese - that would be not usable AND not usefull for the wikipedia readers, editors...)

Re: No Language Left Behind

#128

Post by thamer »

Does this mean that Facebook's advertising system will finally start rejecting ads calling for genocide in Myanmar, and that they will finally flag comments expressing the same intent? As recently as March of this year there were reports that Facebook accepted ads that said "The current killing of the Kalar is not enough, we need to kill more!" or "They are very dirty. The Bengali/Rohingya women have a very low standard of living and poor hygiene. They are not attractive".

Full story: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/kill-facebook-fail...

These were submitted to test Facebook's systems, because there's a good reason not to trust their promises on this front. Facebook was used extensively to propagate hate speech in Myanmar during the crisis of 2017, with their moderation tools and hate speech detection system letting through a ton of hateful content with real-world consequences, in the course of an actual ethnic cleansing campaign.

Other references: "Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo... (2018)

"Violent hate speech continues to thrive on Facebook in Myanmar, AP report finds" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/myanmar-facebook-violent-hate-s... (9 months ago)

Re: No Language Left Behind

#129

Post by underlines »

bobsmooth wrote: post #71
Etheryte wrote: post #24

I'll believe it when I actually see it. I'm a native of a reasonably small language spoken by about a million people and never have I ever seen a good automatic translation for it. The only translations that are good are the ones that have been manually entered, and those that match the structure of the manually entered ones. I think the sentiment is laudable and wish godspeed to the people working on this, but for t…

There's a section where you can try reading translated children's books. See if your language is supported and how good the translation is.

Burmese and Cambodian are 100% useless on google/bing translate, but the children books translations on the example page are really, really good.

Re: No Language Left Behind

#130

Post by account42 »

> Essential cookies

> These cookies are required to use Meta Products. They’re necessary for these sites to work as intended.

What cookies does Facebook "need" to serve a simple article?

Post reply on HN