4 ms·

I agree with your points on AI being better at certain tasks, except of course regarding translation. There are definitely bilingual 4-year-olds who translate

by jkholm 8y ago

I agree with your points on AI being better at certain tasks, except of course regarding translation. There are definitely bilingual 4-year-olds who translate better than the state of the art machine translator. You could maybe say a machine translator can poorly translate a greater set of strings, including highly-technical strings. But a 4-year-old easily can translate a greater proportion of strings correctly or at least intelligibly.

pen2l 8y ago
Really? Because I continue to be more and more amazed by Google Translate everyday. It gets subtleties and strange things right that I never thought a computer translation system could get right. I'm an ESL-speaker, and I think certainly the translation I can do to/from English to my mother language is going to be inferior to Google Translate any day of the week, ignoring completely the fact that I take a _LONG_ time to do translation and Google Translate does it in a second
- jkholm 8y ago
  Learning a language as an adult is a different story. This isn't a no-true-scotsman, either, because I posit that there are quite a lot of 4-year-olds who match my description.
- Foobar8568 8y ago
  If you need to translate what you are going to say, e.g. your thoughts are not in your targeted language, then you are not exactly a speaker. And I can assure you, Google translate is fairly awful. Sometimes my wife is showing me the translation from English to French, and it would take me a while to understand the French meaning. I won't even start on Chinese/Japanese to English (and to French ) or the reverse.
  - short_sells_poo 8y ago
    It is also absolutely atrocious at English -> German. Deepl.com translator is considerably better, but still very far from perfect.
  - paganel 8y ago
    It has been getting better but Google Translate still lacks context (obviously) which makes it fail in some subtle but important ways. For example, I've just run your comment through Google Translate from English to Romanian (my native language) and Italian (which I understand pretty well) and it does a pretty good job until your last sentence, which in Romanian it translates as: > Nici măcar nu voi începe pe chineză / japoneză în engleză (și în franceză) sau invers. and in Italian it goes like: > Non inizierò nemmeno dal cinese / dal giapponese all'inglese (e dal francese) o viceversa. Now, this is literally a perfect translation, as "I won't even start" would literally be translated into the Romanian "Nici măcar nu voi începe" and the Italian "Non inizierò nemmeno", but the meaning of the English phrase is totally different from meaning of the Romanian and Italian phrases. In English the meaning of your last sentence goes something like this: > Don't make me start a discussion on how badly Google Translate does the Chinese/Japanese to English translation while in both Romanian and Italian the meaning of the last sentence (as run through Google Translate) doesn't make almost any sense, because it tells us, the auditory, that the speaker literally won't start "on/from Chinese/Japanese to English", but we are not instructed on what the speaker will start, we have no idea what he's referring to. Of course, this being an English-spoken forum and us knowing English (on top of our native languages) we can understand that Google Translate used a literal translation of "I won't even start" to our native languages and we can make the necessary adjustment in our heads, but to users who have no knowledge of the English language whatsoever this would sound totally alien.
    - Udik 8y ago
      Ironically, I think the GP meant exactly what google translate translated, and that your interpretation is wrong. He says that it takes him a long time to translate French and he won't even start if the original text is Chinese or Japanese. :) Edit: check replies below
      - paganel 8y ago
        I'd guess we'll have to wait for him to explain :) Anyway, translations and what gets lost in translation can be fun pretty fun.
xutopia 8y ago
I don't think any 4 year old can do better at French<>English translation than what Google Translate does. It's a no contest here. Even at 9 year old kids tend to make huge mistakes when it comes to their maternal tongue, fudging up words or creative spelling.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mcv 8y ago
I'm willing to believe that 4 year olds can be better at understanding texts in two different languages[0], but I've yet to see a 4 year old translate a piece of text from one language to another. [0] Though I have no idea how you'd measure 'understanding'.

by jkholm 8y ago

pen2l 8y ago

Really? Because I continue to be more and more amazed by Google Translate everyday. It gets subtleties and strange things right that I never thought a computer translation system could get right. I'm an ESL-speaker, and I think certainly the translation I can do to/from English to my mother language is going to be inferior to Google Translate any day of the week, ignoring completely the fact that I take a _LONG_ time to do translation and Google Translate does it in a second

jkholm 8y ago
Learning a language as an adult is a different story. This isn't a no-true-scotsman, either, because I posit that there are quite a lot of 4-year-olds who match my description.
Foobar8568 8y ago
If you need to translate what you are going to say, e.g. your thoughts are not in your targeted language, then you are not exactly a speaker. And I can assure you, Google translate is fairly awful. Sometimes my wife is showing me the translation from English to French, and it would take me a while to understand the French meaning. I won't even start on Chinese/Japanese to English (and to French ) or the reverse.
- short_sells_poo 8y ago
  It is also absolutely atrocious at English -> German. Deepl.com translator is considerably better, but still very far from perfect.
- paganel 8y ago
  It has been getting better but Google Translate still lacks context (obviously) which makes it fail in some subtle but important ways. For example, I've just run your comment through Google Translate from English to Romanian (my native language) and Italian (which I understand pretty well) and it does a pretty good job until your last sentence, which in Romanian it translates as: > Nici măcar nu voi începe pe chineză / japoneză în engleză (și în franceză) sau invers. and in Italian it goes like: > Non inizierò nemmeno dal cinese / dal giapponese all'inglese (e dal francese) o viceversa. Now, this is literally a perfect translation, as "I won't even start" would literally be translated into the Romanian "Nici măcar nu voi începe" and the Italian "Non inizierò nemmeno", but the meaning of the English phrase is totally different from meaning of the Romanian and Italian phrases. In English the meaning of your last sentence goes something like this: > Don't make me start a discussion on how badly Google Translate does the Chinese/Japanese to English translation while in both Romanian and Italian the meaning of the last sentence (as run through Google Translate) doesn't make almost any sense, because it tells us, the auditory, that the speaker literally won't start "on/from Chinese/Japanese to English", but we are not instructed on what the speaker will start, we have no idea what he's referring to. Of course, this being an English-spoken forum and us knowing English (on top of our native languages) we can understand that Google Translate used a literal translation of "I won't even start" to our native languages and we can make the necessary adjustment in our heads, but to users who have no knowledge of the English language whatsoever this would sound totally alien.
  - Udik 8y ago
    Ironically, I think the GP meant exactly what google translate translated, and that your interpretation is wrong. He says that it takes him a long time to translate French and he won't even start if the original text is Chinese or Japanese. :) Edit: check replies below
    - paganel 8y ago
      I'd guess we'll have to wait for him to explain :) Anyway, translations and what gets lost in translation can be fun pretty fun.

xutopia 8y ago

I don't think any 4 year old can do better at French<>English translation than what Google Translate does. It's a no contest here. Even at 9 year old kids tend to make huge mistakes when it comes to their maternal tongue, fudging up words or creative spelling.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

mcv 8y ago

I'm willing to believe that 4 year olds can be better at understanding texts in two different languages[0], but I've yet to see a 4 year old translate a piece of text from one language to another. [0] Though I have no idea how you'd measure 'understanding'.