4 ms·

Seems it mishandles the difference between Premiers and Prime Ministers.

by microcolonel 10y ago

ilaksh 10y ago
In what language pair going which way
- microcolonel 10y ago
  In English, Justin Trudeau is not the premier of Canada, he is the Prime Minister. The problem with the translation is that the machine translator would need to know specifically about Prime Ministers as a linguistic category, and know that Justin Trudeau is in that category. The Chinese side of the translation does not encode the difference.
  - HappyTypist 10y ago
    With enough data the Chinese side can encode <head of state> [Justin Trudeau] -> <head of state/premier> [Justin Trudeau]
    - yorwba 10y ago
      In fact, the Chinese text says 加拿大+總理+杜鲁多 which is Canada+<head of state>+Trudeau. That's apparently enough context for the machine translation to pick up on, producing the correct "Prime Minister" title. The only flaw in the GNMT version I can find is that 此行, "this visit" is left untranslated. (But I'm not a native Chinese speaker, so there might be more.)
visarga 10y ago
Word sense disambiguation is just one of many factors that go into machine translation. What matters is average human evaluation.
Old_Thrashbarg 10y ago
It seems the human mishandled this as well calling Trudeau a premier.
nl 10y ago
A few people have already pointed this out, but it is the human translation which renders him as Premier Trudeau. The GNMT version renders him as Prime Minister Trudeau, and talks about the meeting between the two premiers. I don't read Chinese, so I can't tell what the original says.
a-priori 10y ago
Really, there isn't much of a difference. The term premier is merely an abbreviation of the French premier ministre ('first minister'), and in French they don't distinguish between the roles -- the Premier of Ontario is called le Premier ministre de l'Ontario in French, just like the Prime Minister of Canada is called le Premier ministre du Canada. In modern Canadian English it's conventional to use 'premier' to refer to provincial heads of government and 'prime minister' to refer to the federal head of government. This hasn't always been the case: until 1972, British Columbia referred to its provincial leader as its Prime Minister and before that other provinces did the same.

Seems it mishandles the difference between Premiers and Prime Ministers.

ilaksh 10y ago

In what language pair going which way

microcolonel 10y ago
In English, Justin Trudeau is not the premier of Canada, he is the Prime Minister. The problem with the translation is that the machine translator would need to know specifically about Prime Ministers as a linguistic category, and know that Justin Trudeau is in that category. The Chinese side of the translation does not encode the difference.
- HappyTypist 10y ago
  With enough data the Chinese side can encode <head of state> [Justin Trudeau] -> <head of state/premier> [Justin Trudeau]
  - yorwba 10y ago
    In fact, the Chinese text says 加拿大+總理+杜鲁多 which is Canada+<head of state>+Trudeau. That's apparently enough context for the machine translation to pick up on, producing the correct "Prime Minister" title. The only flaw in the GNMT version I can find is that 此行, "this visit" is left untranslated. (But I'm not a native Chinese speaker, so there might be more.)

visarga 10y ago

Word sense disambiguation is just one of many factors that go into machine translation. What matters is average human evaluation.

Old_Thrashbarg 10y ago

It seems the human mishandled this as well calling Trudeau a premier.

nl 10y ago

A few people have already pointed this out, but it is the human translation which renders him as Premier Trudeau. The GNMT version renders him as Prime Minister Trudeau, and talks about the meeting between the two premiers. I don't read Chinese, so I can't tell what the original says.

a-priori 10y ago

Really, there isn't much of a difference. The term premier is merely an abbreviation of the French premier ministre ('first minister'), and in French they don't distinguish between the roles -- the Premier of Ontario is called le Premier ministre de l'Ontario in French, just like the Prime Minister of Canada is called le Premier ministre du Canada. In modern Canadian English it's conventional to use 'premier' to refer to provincial heads of government and 'prime minister' to refer to the federal head of government. This hasn't always been the case: until 1972, British Columbia referred to its provincial leader as its Prime Minister and before that other provinces did the same.