6 ms·

Immigration Officials Use Google Translate to Vet Refugees

17 points by danso 7y ago

cameronbrown 7y ago
> Language experts caution even students against using the service. Well duh. The whole point of studying a language is to.. be able to know it?
- samfisher83 7y ago
  Also if Google translate was good enough it would hurt their employment opportunities.
RenRav 7y ago
It's fast and seemingly good enough? I wonder how long this has been going on.
jolmg 7y ago
One area where I've noticed that Google Translate frequently fails at is with what's known as "false friends"[1]. For example, if you try to translate "condescending" to Spanish it will give you "condescendiente", but that means "to tend to adapt to the likes and wishes of others", which is completely different from the English definition of "to display a patronizing, superior attitude". Translate "fallacy" and it will give you "falacia", which is kind of similar, but different. In English it means "incorrectness of reasoning", but in Spanish it means "false argument to trick or cause error", meaning that the Spanish word implies malicious intent. Translate "patronize" and it will give you "patrocinar", which means "to sponsor". "patrocinar" can't be used in the sense of "to treat in a condescending manner". It's pretty hard to catch these kinds of things until you're really experienced with both languages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend
- thomasfoster96 7y ago
  > Translate "patronize" and it will give you "patrocinar", which means "to sponsor”. That translation is pretty accurate for at least one of the senses of patronise, though. Word-sense disambiguation is what’s failing Google Translate in that case.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Even if you translate the common phrase "don't patronize me", it still uses "patrocinar" which is the wrong sense of the word as typically used.
    - thomasfoster96 7y ago
      Yep, I’d put money on Google Translate interpreting the English wrong in the first place. I’ve just tried a bunch of variations on “don’t patronise me.” and these are the results: "Don't patronise me.” -> "No me patrocines.” “Don’t patronize me.” -> "No me patrocines.” "Don't patronise me!” -> "¡No me patrocines!” “Don’t patronize me!” -> "¡No me patrocines!” "Do not patronise me.” -> "No me patrocines.” "Do not patronize me.” -> "No seas condescendiente conmigo.” “Do not patronise me!” -> "¡No me patrocines!” "Do not patronize me!” -> "No seas condescendiente conmigo.” Word-sense disambiguation seems to work if you write “do not” instead of “don’t” and use ‘-ize' spelling, it fails otherwise.
      - yongjik 7y ago
        I just tried "Don't patronize me" to Korean and got 나를 애용하지 마십시오, or something like "Do not use me with satisfaction/love." Umm...
      - jolmg 7y ago
        None of those worked. Remember that "condescendiente", as I showed in my first example, doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
        thomasfoster96 7y ago
- thrower123 7y ago
  We have tried to use both Google and Bing translate APIs to do real-time translation of tech support requests. An unacceptably large amount of time, naively using those services leads to hilarious results. One of the big ones was that Outlook would often get translated into something equivalent to "worldview." When something like a quarter to one third of all requests are to reset an Outlook password, this makes the translation look really bad. Another common mistranslation was "remote desktop" or "Can I remote into your machine?" The most common translations usually came out to the effect of "Can I use your TV remote? It's certainly possible to train custom models on a corpus, and use them instead, but that requires quite a lot of effort and people that know the languages in question to verify.
- jolmg 7y ago
  By the way, those examples I shared can be figured out by checking dictionaries in their respective languages and comparing definitions. However, that doesn't always work. For example, "excited" in English and "excitado" in Spanish both have the same definitions of 1) being enthusiastic and 2) being sexually aroused. However, which is the primarily understood definition is different. When you say "I'm excited to go with you" in English, nobody is going to understand you're sexually aroused. In Spanish, they can/will. At least for being enthusiastic, the proper translation of "excited" is "emocionado" which Google Translate does do correctly, at least.
dahdum 7y ago
I’m curious what a proposed solution is? USCIS is funded by service fees, and social media analysis started under Obama with support across the aisle. Raising fees to pay for better translation services is one way I suppose.

17 points by danso 7y ago

> Language experts caution even students against using the service. Well duh. The whole point of studying a language is to.. be able to know it?

samfisher83 7y ago
Also if Google translate was good enough it would hurt their employment opportunities.

RenRav 7y ago

It's fast and seemingly good enough? I wonder how long this has been going on.

jolmg 7y ago

One area where I've noticed that Google Translate frequently fails at is with what's known as "false friends"[1]. For example, if you try to translate "condescending" to Spanish it will give you "condescendiente", but that means "to tend to adapt to the likes and wishes of others", which is completely different from the English definition of "to display a patronizing, superior attitude". Translate "fallacy" and it will give you "falacia", which is kind of similar, but different. In English it means "incorrectness of reasoning", but in Spanish it means "false argument to trick or cause error", meaning that the Spanish word implies malicious intent. Translate "patronize" and it will give you "patrocinar", which means "to sponsor". "patrocinar" can't be used in the sense of "to treat in a condescending manner". It's pretty hard to catch these kinds of things until you're really experienced with both languages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend

thomasfoster96 7y ago
> Translate "patronize" and it will give you "patrocinar", which means "to sponsor”. That translation is pretty accurate for at least one of the senses of patronise, though. Word-sense disambiguation is what’s failing Google Translate in that case.
- jolmg 7y ago
  Even if you translate the common phrase "don't patronize me", it still uses "patrocinar" which is the wrong sense of the word as typically used.
  - thomasfoster96 7y ago
    Yep, I’d put money on Google Translate interpreting the English wrong in the first place. I’ve just tried a bunch of variations on “don’t patronise me.” and these are the results: "Don't patronise me.” -> "No me patrocines.” “Don’t patronize me.” -> "No me patrocines.” "Don't patronise me!” -> "¡No me patrocines!” “Don’t patronize me!” -> "¡No me patrocines!” "Do not patronise me.” -> "No me patrocines.” "Do not patronize me.” -> "No seas condescendiente conmigo.” “Do not patronise me!” -> "¡No me patrocines!” "Do not patronize me!” -> "No seas condescendiente conmigo.” Word-sense disambiguation seems to work if you write “do not” instead of “don’t” and use ‘-ize' spelling, it fails otherwise.
    - yongjik 7y ago
      I just tried "Don't patronize me" to Korean and got 나를 애용하지 마십시오, or something like "Do not use me with satisfaction/love." Umm...
    - jolmg 7y ago
      None of those worked. Remember that "condescendiente", as I showed in my first example, doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
      - thomasfoster96 7y ago
thrower123 7y ago
We have tried to use both Google and Bing translate APIs to do real-time translation of tech support requests. An unacceptably large amount of time, naively using those services leads to hilarious results. One of the big ones was that Outlook would often get translated into something equivalent to "worldview." When something like a quarter to one third of all requests are to reset an Outlook password, this makes the translation look really bad. Another common mistranslation was "remote desktop" or "Can I remote into your machine?" The most common translations usually came out to the effect of "Can I use your TV remote? It's certainly possible to train custom models on a corpus, and use them instead, but that requires quite a lot of effort and people that know the languages in question to verify.
jolmg 7y ago
By the way, those examples I shared can be figured out by checking dictionaries in their respective languages and comparing definitions. However, that doesn't always work. For example, "excited" in English and "excitado" in Spanish both have the same definitions of 1) being enthusiastic and 2) being sexually aroused. However, which is the primarily understood definition is different. When you say "I'm excited to go with you" in English, nobody is going to understand you're sexually aroused. In Spanish, they can/will. At least for being enthusiastic, the proper translation of "excited" is "emocionado" which Google Translate does do correctly, at least.

dahdum 7y ago

I’m curious what a proposed solution is? USCIS is funded by service fees, and social media analysis started under Obama with support across the aisle. Raising fees to pay for better translation services is one way I suppose.