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Totally not relevant, but holy cow Google Translate is getting good. I swear I've read articles in plain English that were less comprehensible than this transl

Totally not relevant, but holy cow Google Translate is getting good. I swear I've read articles in plain English that were less comprehensible than this translated on, by a mile.

dhosek 9y ago
I didn't look closely at the link or url and didn't realize that I was reading Google Translate until I saw your comment. That's scary good translation.
- mediocrejoker 9y ago
  I didn't realize either but I had a very hard time following what was being explained and assumed it was just poorly written.
hollander 9y ago
Does this have to do with German being such a structured language? Just a guess here, but it may explain things a bit.
- nyolfen 9y ago
  basically, there's just a larger body of translated work to develop from for western european languages because the EU has to translate all official documents between the major languages > One explanation could have to do with the text the algorithm uses to generate its translations. Google Translate works by drawing from vast banks of text, searching for patterns in language use to match future translation requests. Some of those texts include documents from the United Nations and the European Union that have to be translated into multiple languages. (from first result i found for this bit of trivia but probably not the best: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/a-secret-code-in-google-translate/378864/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/a-sec... )
hangonhn 9y ago
True but isn't the job a lot easier because it's going from German to English, which are closely related? I don't want to take away from Google's achievement but wanted to point that out to set expectations.
- Animats 9y ago
  Yes. Chinese to English is still awful.
chickenfries 9y ago
First sentence: > The fact that the fingerprint sensors on smartphones are not quite as secure as the manufacturers want us to believe, has already emerged with the first iPhone with this feature. Ok, a bit awkward > The technique has improved since then, the methods to crack it but also turn. Uh, what? > And not with the means of the analog, but the digital world - via machine learning and an artificial intelligence. I agree that if you're scanning, you might not realize that you're reading a translation, but it's very obvious to me if I slow down and actually read it.
- Mz 9y ago
  In context, I think it (that specific bit) is fairly easy to follow: The technique has improved since then, the methods to crack it but also turn. The eternal cat and mouse game between team blue and team red. So, apparently the first sentence means that the technique has improved since then, but so have the methods trying to crack it. Though, to be fair, I have no clue what rumgeilt means and that was apparently just not translated at all.
  - 1maginary 9y ago
    >Die Technik hat sich seitdem zwar verbessert, die Methoden sie zu knacken aber wiederum auch. Is what it was trying to translate, not sure where you/it got 'rumgeilt' from. A more natural sounding translation would be: The technology has improved since then, but, on the other hand, so have the methods to crack it You could also translate 'wiederum' as 'in turn' which might exlain the 'turn' in Google's translation.
    - Mz 9y ago
      Rumgeilt was later in the English translation of the article. I know a little German, a little French and took Classical Greek in college, as well as Intro to Linguistics (where, iirc, we covered a bit of Swahili grammar for some damn reason). I am pretty comfortable with both weird idioms not translating directly and with finding close, if uncommon, matches between some other language and words or phrases in English. So, the "in turn" part doesn't disturb me. I mean, you could translate it as something like "They are taking it in turns" or "but the methods to crack it also got their turn to improve."
devrandomguy 9y ago
It's pretty good at European languages, but still terrible at Arabic and Japanese. The system still has a very shallow understanding of the content. One of my primarily Arabic-speaking colleagues was actually offended by Google Translate butchering their language so badly; their culture places a relatively high value on poetry, calligraphy, etc. As an exercise, try translating your search queries into Arabic before searching. Then, let Google translate the results for you. It is hilarious.
- krrrh 9y ago
  I wonder how much Arabic translation suffers from a lack of available data to feed the ML. [1] > Nor are foreign books much translated: in the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, say the authors, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year. [1] http://www.economist.com/node/1213392 http://www.economist.com/node/1213392
  - devrandomguy 9y ago
    I am somewhat surprised that our ML is not yet strong enough to make good use of a relatively small, but precisely translated work, such as the Qur'an. The success of human anthropologists in deciphering the Rosetta stone to learn the ancient Egyptian languages must have had as much to do with understanding the context, the culture and tools of the time, as actually cracking a code.

Totally not relevant, but holy cow Google Translate is getting good. I swear I've read articles in plain English that were less comprehensible than this translated on, by a mile.

dhosek 9y ago

I didn't look closely at the link or url and didn't realize that I was reading Google Translate until I saw your comment. That's scary good translation.

mediocrejoker 9y ago
I didn't realize either but I had a very hard time following what was being explained and assumed it was just poorly written.

hollander 9y ago

Does this have to do with German being such a structured language? Just a guess here, but it may explain things a bit.

nyolfen 9y ago
basically, there's just a larger body of translated work to develop from for western european languages because the EU has to translate all official documents between the major languages > One explanation could have to do with the text the algorithm uses to generate its translations. Google Translate works by drawing from vast banks of text, searching for patterns in language use to match future translation requests. Some of those texts include documents from the United Nations and the European Union that have to be translated into multiple languages. (from first result i found for this bit of trivia but probably not the best: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/a-secret-code-in-google-translate/378864/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/a-sec... )

hangonhn 9y ago

True but isn't the job a lot easier because it's going from German to English, which are closely related? I don't want to take away from Google's achievement but wanted to point that out to set expectations.

Animats 9y ago
Yes. Chinese to English is still awful.

chickenfries 9y ago

First sentence: > The fact that the fingerprint sensors on smartphones are not quite as secure as the manufacturers want us to believe, has already emerged with the first iPhone with this feature. Ok, a bit awkward > The technique has improved since then, the methods to crack it but also turn. Uh, what? > And not with the means of the analog, but the digital world - via machine learning and an artificial intelligence. I agree that if you're scanning, you might not realize that you're reading a translation, but it's very obvious to me if I slow down and actually read it.

Mz 9y ago
In context, I think it (that specific bit) is fairly easy to follow: The technique has improved since then, the methods to crack it but also turn. The eternal cat and mouse game between team blue and team red. So, apparently the first sentence means that the technique has improved since then, but so have the methods trying to crack it. Though, to be fair, I have no clue what rumgeilt means and that was apparently just not translated at all.
- 1maginary 9y ago
  >Die Technik hat sich seitdem zwar verbessert, die Methoden sie zu knacken aber wiederum auch. Is what it was trying to translate, not sure where you/it got 'rumgeilt' from. A more natural sounding translation would be: The technology has improved since then, but, on the other hand, so have the methods to crack it You could also translate 'wiederum' as 'in turn' which might exlain the 'turn' in Google's translation.
  - Mz 9y ago
    Rumgeilt was later in the English translation of the article. I know a little German, a little French and took Classical Greek in college, as well as Intro to Linguistics (where, iirc, we covered a bit of Swahili grammar for some damn reason). I am pretty comfortable with both weird idioms not translating directly and with finding close, if uncommon, matches between some other language and words or phrases in English. So, the "in turn" part doesn't disturb me. I mean, you could translate it as something like "They are taking it in turns" or "but the methods to crack it also got their turn to improve."

devrandomguy 9y ago

It's pretty good at European languages, but still terrible at Arabic and Japanese. The system still has a very shallow understanding of the content. One of my primarily Arabic-speaking colleagues was actually offended by Google Translate butchering their language so badly; their culture places a relatively high value on poetry, calligraphy, etc. As an exercise, try translating your search queries into Arabic before searching. Then, let Google translate the results for you. It is hilarious.

krrrh 9y ago
I wonder how much Arabic translation suffers from a lack of available data to feed the ML. [1] > Nor are foreign books much translated: in the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, say the authors, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year. [1] http://www.economist.com/node/1213392 http://www.economist.com/node/1213392
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  I am somewhat surprised that our ML is not yet strong enough to make good use of a relatively small, but precisely translated work, such as the Qur'an. The success of human anthropologists in deciphering the Rosetta stone to learn the ancient Egyptian languages must have had as much to do with understanding the context, the culture and tools of the time, as actually cracking a code.