4 ms·

I think you're getting downvoted because you picked one of the hardest language pairs there is for machine translation. German grammar is really hard to parse,

I think you're getting downvoted because you picked one of the hardest language pairs there is for machine translation. German grammar is really hard to parse, e.g. verbs being split with one part at the beginning and the other at the end of the sentence. Generally, figuring out which part of the sentence refers to which other part is quite hard. Google Translate works a lot better with many other language pairs, so people might be downvoting because your opinion sounds exaggerated and doesn't line up with their own experience. It's also quite dismissive of the submission, which is never nice. The guidelines ask us to "avoid gratuitous negativity". I often find your comments to be quite negative, often unnecessarily so.

kuschku 10y ago
It seems like I forgot the actual point of my argument – "It’s a needed improvement, but still far from good". > I often find your comments to be quite negative, often unnecessarily so. Well, if it’s a relief, I’m equally negative about stuff I create myself.
DonaldFisk 10y ago
Translations from French to English seem to be a lot better. Why is that?
- pigscantfly 10y ago
  The French/English language pair was the problem machine translation research started with and has seen the most work. There are also greater similarities than most language pairs between those two due to the Norman conquest in 1066.
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    I accept your first point, but I disagree with your second - 1066 and all that notwithstanding, English is still very much a Germanic language, and grammatically very different from French.
    - pigscantfly 10y ago
      You're right; I was arguing that French and English are more highly correlated than a pair of languages chosen uniformly at random and therefore easier for MT, but I could have made that more clear. I think the difference in accuracy between English <--> French and English <--> German does largely come down to historical academic preferences and data availability, as opposed to linguistic reasons. English <--> French vs. English <--> Mandarin (for example) is a different story.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

kuschku 10y ago

It seems like I forgot the actual point of my argument – "It’s a needed improvement, but still far from good". > I often find your comments to be quite negative, often unnecessarily so. Well, if it’s a relief, I’m equally negative about stuff I create myself.

DonaldFisk 10y ago

Translations from French to English seem to be a lot better. Why is that?

pigscantfly 10y ago
The French/English language pair was the problem machine translation research started with and has seen the most work. There are also greater similarities than most language pairs between those two due to the Norman conquest in 1066.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  I accept your first point, but I disagree with your second - 1066 and all that notwithstanding, English is still very much a Germanic language, and grammatically very different from French.
  - pigscantfly 10y ago
    You're right; I was arguing that French and English are more highly correlated than a pair of languages chosen uniformly at random and therefore easier for MT, but I could have made that more clear. I think the difference in accuracy between English <--> French and English <--> German does largely come down to historical academic preferences and data availability, as opposed to linguistic reasons. English <--> French vs. English <--> Mandarin (for example) is a different story.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]