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I don't know if Google Translate is "good enough", that's an arbitrary scale. What I do know is that it's a lot better than what existed before. Yes, I'm human

I don't know if Google Translate is "good enough", that's an arbitrary scale. What I do know is that it's a lot better than what existed before. Yes, I'm human and know language, but Google Translate exists to serve humans? The particular paragraph is mangled to the point of being gibberish, yes, and noone with the option to choose between your translation or Google's would give Google's even a second glance. But if I don't, it's that, or a paragraph of text that I can just about identify as being Greek, but which is otherwise, well, Greek to me. But as you concede, with context and human understanding of language, I was able to pick out a few crucial chunks of meaning. Whether it's good enough depends on what I'm trying to achieve. If I'm judging your skill as a writer and storyteller, then obviously not. But if we hung out with Vasiliki, Mitsos and Maria last year and you put that on Facebook, I'd at least know enough to send my sympathy to Mitsos and have a good chuckle over Vasiliki's romantic endeavours, which would probably be what you intended - - which is pretty much the definition of "good enough". As for travel guides and Google Translate, as someone who's travelled extensively both pre and post Google Translate, there is nothing in the difference of experience that doesn't qualify as a breakthrough. I have had fully meaningful (if not exactly deeply philosophical) conversations with people entirely mediated by Google Translate. I'm sorry your experiences have been so different from mine.

mamon 9y ago
>> I have had fully meaningful (if not exactly deeply philosophical) conversations Any conversation can easily become "philosophical" when Google Translate messes up and inserts random garbage instead of intended meaning, and people, instead of dismissing translation as garbage, decide to seek some deeper meaning in it :)
visarga 9y ago
> The particular paragraph is mangled to the point of being gibberish You just discovered the poor quality of LSTM generated text. It might come as a surprise to you, but it's legend between AI researchers :-( If it's not translation (such as in chatbots, image captioning, or computer generated text in general), it's even worse. Unfortunately we can't generate text that makes sense. We can only do it in very specific cases and with lots of errors. Other language models are even worse than LSTMs. The problem is that automated translators don't have real world experience and can't think causally. Humans can, because we are in possession of a body and live inside a complex world. We can experiment to test our hypothesis, GT only sees text and can't test anything.
the_af 9y ago
> The particular paragraph is mangled to the point of being gibberish I actually disagree it's gibberish. I could understand enough to make sense of the situation (the part about blades in his leg puzzled me, but I understood about Maria being an ex girlfriend even if the sentence didn't resemble actual human language). This translation is by definition not gibberish. > But if we hung out with Vasiliki, Mitsos and Maria last year and you put that on Facebook, I'd at least know enough to send my sympathy to Mitsos and have a good chuckle over Vasiliki's romantic endeavours, which would probably be what you intended - - which is pretty much the definition of "good enough". Exactly!
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> This translation is by definition not gibberish. You have a definition of gibberish? ~.^
  - the_af 9y ago
    Yes: "meaningless or unintelligible talk or writing." (definition #1 from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gibberish http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gibberish). If I can extract a reasonably accurate understanding from a paragraph, then by definition it's not meaningless nor unintelligible.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      In that case, if that sentence above is not gibberish, why doesn't everyone speak that way?
      - the_af 9y ago
        Because non-gibberish doesn't mean "the best/most common way to communicate". If you speak in English like Yoda, the character from Star Wars, you're perfectly intelligible -- hence, you're not speaking gibberish -- even though (almost) no-one speaks that way in real life. Gibberish means nonsense. If most people understand you, it's not nonsense.

mamon 9y ago

>> I have had fully meaningful (if not exactly deeply philosophical) conversations Any conversation can easily become "philosophical" when Google Translate messes up and inserts random garbage instead of intended meaning, and people, instead of dismissing translation as garbage, decide to seek some deeper meaning in it :)

visarga 9y ago

> The particular paragraph is mangled to the point of being gibberish You just discovered the poor quality of LSTM generated text. It might come as a surprise to you, but it's legend between AI researchers :-( If it's not translation (such as in chatbots, image captioning, or computer generated text in general), it's even worse. Unfortunately we can't generate text that makes sense. We can only do it in very specific cases and with lots of errors. Other language models are even worse than LSTMs. The problem is that automated translators don't have real world experience and can't think causally. Humans can, because we are in possession of a body and live inside a complex world. We can experiment to test our hypothesis, GT only sees text and can't test anything.

the_af 9y ago

> The particular paragraph is mangled to the point of being gibberish I actually disagree it's gibberish. I could understand enough to make sense of the situation (the part about blades in his leg puzzled me, but I understood about Maria being an ex girlfriend even if the sentence didn't resemble actual human language). This translation is by definition not gibberish. > But if we hung out with Vasiliki, Mitsos and Maria last year and you put that on Facebook, I'd at least know enough to send my sympathy to Mitsos and have a good chuckle over Vasiliki's romantic endeavours, which would probably be what you intended - - which is pretty much the definition of "good enough". Exactly!

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> This translation is by definition not gibberish. You have a definition of gibberish? ~.^
- the_af 9y ago
  Yes: "meaningless or unintelligible talk or writing." (definition #1 from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gibberish http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gibberish). If I can extract a reasonably accurate understanding from a paragraph, then by definition it's not meaningless nor unintelligible.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    In that case, if that sentence above is not gibberish, why doesn't everyone speak that way?
    - the_af 9y ago
      Because non-gibberish doesn't mean "the best/most common way to communicate". If you speak in English like Yoda, the character from Star Wars, you're perfectly intelligible -- hence, you're not speaking gibberish -- even though (almost) no-one speaks that way in real life. Gibberish means nonsense. If most people understand you, it's not nonsense.