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Oh, so much. Machine translation doesn't understand context and routinely fails at fairly basic translation tasks. Here's part of the Google translation of the

Oh, so much. Machine translation doesn't understand context and routinely fails at fairly basic translation tasks. Here's part of the Google translation of the front page of ja.wikipedia.org into English: > 非行少年の再非行の抑止や更生を目的としており、決定までの過程として、「非行事実を家庭裁判所に送致・通告 - 家庭裁判所調査官（以下「調査官」と略称する）等による調査 - 調査結果をふまえた審判 - 必要に応じて保護的措置あるいは保護処分を決定」という流れを経るのが通例である。 > And for the purpose of deterrence and rehabilitation of re-delinquency of juvenile delinquents, as the process of until a decision, " the fact delinquency to the family court -up Reel-notice - family court investigators (referred to hereinafter as" investigators "), or the like by the survey - survey It is customary to go through the flow of " judgment based on the result- decide protective measures or protective measures as necessary ". That's barely recognizable as English. The translation is hot garbage. Perhaps something you might use if you had an emergency. Just to point out here... the text on the front page of Wikipedia tends to be very neutral, matter-of-fact, and well written. There are no characters (like in novels), no use of slang, and nothing else that should be tricky for translation, and yet we get this garbage. It's a miracle that machine translation works at all, and when it does work, it is usually because you are translating between languages that are fairly similar to begin with. For example, English and Spanish.

nonbirithm 6y ago
One issue with Japanese specifically is that the subject is often omitted from the sentence and inferred from context. It's less common to see the equivalent pronouns of "I" or "they" in Japanese, but it's required a lot more in English. A machine translation would have to determine what pronoun to use when there isn't one in the original sentence to go off of, which is hard. Then there are other things besides pronouns that require inference. For example, adding な to the end of a sentence could mean either a modifier expressing admiration or confirmation, or it could be indicate a demand or order not to do something. In machine translation it almost always seems to be translated to "don't" no matter the context. That only makes the translation less accurate.
- hrktb 6y ago
  I get the feeling that pronouns are also not explicit in Chinese most of the time, making it as hard to properly translate in english. And I’d assume that could be the most common language people would want to translate from online platforms in this day and age.
  - fireattack 6y ago
    It's not nearly as bad compared to Japanese. And it pretty much only happens in conversations.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    The most common language people would want to translate from online platforms is most likely English, given it's ubiquitous use on the internet and the fact that there are more people who don't speak English than people who do. Of course the details of how English is turned into incomprehensible garbage by machine translation always depend on the target language in question.
benrbray 6y ago
Yeah, Google Translate is hot garbage when it comes to Japanese. DeepL does quite a good job though! > The purpose of this process is to deter and rehabilitate the juvenile delinquent, and the process of making a decision on the delinquency is usually conducted in the following manner: referral and notification of the fact of the delinquency to the family court; investigation by an investigator of the family court (hereinafter referred to as "investigator"); trial based on the results of the investigation; and, if necessary, a decision on protective measures or protective measures. There is. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
- naniwaduni 6y ago
  Right from the start, DeepL manages to drop information, making it seem as if it's describing a program that deters juvenile delinquency. DeepL is doing a better job of generating text that seems to make sense, but this just helps to more effectively communicate the wrong meaning, and in a manner less detectable to people who would use it. This is a much more insidious failure mode.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > DeepL is doing a better job of generating text that seems to make sense, but this just helps to more effectively communicate the wrong meaning, and in a manner less detectable to people who would use it. This is a much more insidious failure mode. This is something I don't understand about the use of autocorrect. Autocorrect takes misspelled words, which are essentially always easy to understand, and replaces them with random other words. It's frequently impossible to guess what original word got mangled by autocorrect into appearing in a suddenly unintelligible sentence. This is a problem that misspellings just don't have. Autocorrect is actively making communication worse. What's it supposed to be doing? Why is it there at all?
    - rocqua 6y ago
      Fully automatic autocorrect is very different from optional (i.e. user prompted) autocorrect. The first has your stated effect. The second does not.
getoj 6y ago
For anyone interested in a correct translation, the Japanese reads: "Its purpose is recidivism prevention and rehabilitation for youth offenders; the usual process leading up to a decision is: Notice or report of the fact of the youth crime to the family court > Investigation by the family court investigating officer (the "Investigator") and/or other parties > Judgment based on the results of the investigation > Protective measures or a disposition for rehabilitation, as necessary." >Just to point out here... the text on the front page of Wikipedia tends to be very neutral, matter-of-fact, and well written This is true in general, though perhaps not always of Japanese wikipedia, and certainly not on legal topics. I have no love lost with machine translation (hard agree on naniwaduni's comment about "insidious failure modes"), but there are very few humans who would be able to translate this particular excerpt effectively. Legal translation is my job and I still found this sentence to be reasonably challenging.
_-___________-_ 6y ago
Admittedly I am usually translating English and east Asian languages, like this example, but I've basically given up on Google Translate (and other machine translation) at this point. It's worse than useless, because it often produces a translation that reads like it could be correct, but has the meaning reversed or otherwise garbled.
DelightOne 6y ago
How are models trained for this, maybe Ja->En->Ja and see how the the result differs from the input?
MiroF 6y ago
Uhhh.. I just translated the exact same sentence from wikipedia in Google translate and got: "The juvenile protection procedure aims to deter and rehabilitate juvenile delinquents, and as a process up to the decision, "send and notify the facts of delinquency to the family court-family court investigator (hereinafter abbreviated as" investigator "). It is customary to go through the flow of "investigation by, etc.-a referee based on the investigation results-determine protective measures or protective measures as necessary"." Not incredible (especially when it starts listing the process), but not as god awful as whatever you got. I'm curious if you omitted some part of the sentence when pasting in. It's also worth noting that this is a pretty out-of-domain legal Japanese sentence.

nonbirithm 6y ago

One issue with Japanese specifically is that the subject is often omitted from the sentence and inferred from context. It's less common to see the equivalent pronouns of "I" or "they" in Japanese, but it's required a lot more in English. A machine translation would have to determine what pronoun to use when there isn't one in the original sentence to go off of, which is hard. Then there are other things besides pronouns that require inference. For example, adding な to the end of a sentence could mean either a modifier expressing admiration or confirmation, or it could be indicate a demand or order not to do something. In machine translation it almost always seems to be translated to "don't" no matter the context. That only makes the translation less accurate.

hrktb 6y ago
I get the feeling that pronouns are also not explicit in Chinese most of the time, making it as hard to properly translate in english. And I’d assume that could be the most common language people would want to translate from online platforms in this day and age.
- fireattack 6y ago
  It's not nearly as bad compared to Japanese. And it pretty much only happens in conversations.
- yorwba 6y ago
  The most common language people would want to translate from online platforms is most likely English, given it's ubiquitous use on the internet and the fact that there are more people who don't speak English than people who do. Of course the details of how English is turned into incomprehensible garbage by machine translation always depend on the target language in question.

benrbray 6y ago

Yeah, Google Translate is hot garbage when it comes to Japanese. DeepL does quite a good job though! > The purpose of this process is to deter and rehabilitate the juvenile delinquent, and the process of making a decision on the delinquency is usually conducted in the following manner: referral and notification of the fact of the delinquency to the family court; investigation by an investigator of the family court (hereinafter referred to as "investigator"); trial based on the results of the investigation; and, if necessary, a decision on protective measures or protective measures. There is. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

naniwaduni 6y ago
Right from the start, DeepL manages to drop information, making it seem as if it's describing a program that deters juvenile delinquency. DeepL is doing a better job of generating text that seems to make sense, but this just helps to more effectively communicate the wrong meaning, and in a manner less detectable to people who would use it. This is a much more insidious failure mode.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > DeepL is doing a better job of generating text that seems to make sense, but this just helps to more effectively communicate the wrong meaning, and in a manner less detectable to people who would use it. This is a much more insidious failure mode. This is something I don't understand about the use of autocorrect. Autocorrect takes misspelled words, which are essentially always easy to understand, and replaces them with random other words. It's frequently impossible to guess what original word got mangled by autocorrect into appearing in a suddenly unintelligible sentence. This is a problem that misspellings just don't have. Autocorrect is actively making communication worse. What's it supposed to be doing? Why is it there at all?
  - rocqua 6y ago
    Fully automatic autocorrect is very different from optional (i.e. user prompted) autocorrect. The first has your stated effect. The second does not.

getoj 6y ago

For anyone interested in a correct translation, the Japanese reads: "Its purpose is recidivism prevention and rehabilitation for youth offenders; the usual process leading up to a decision is: Notice or report of the fact of the youth crime to the family court > Investigation by the family court investigating officer (the "Investigator") and/or other parties > Judgment based on the results of the investigation > Protective measures or a disposition for rehabilitation, as necessary." >Just to point out here... the text on the front page of Wikipedia tends to be very neutral, matter-of-fact, and well written This is true in general, though perhaps not always of Japanese wikipedia, and certainly not on legal topics. I have no love lost with machine translation (hard agree on naniwaduni's comment about "insidious failure modes"), but there are very few humans who would be able to translate this particular excerpt effectively. Legal translation is my job and I still found this sentence to be reasonably challenging.

_-___________-_ 6y ago

Admittedly I am usually translating English and east Asian languages, like this example, but I've basically given up on Google Translate (and other machine translation) at this point. It's worse than useless, because it often produces a translation that reads like it could be correct, but has the meaning reversed or otherwise garbled.

DelightOne 6y ago

How are models trained for this, maybe Ja->En->Ja and see how the the result differs from the input?

MiroF 6y ago

Uhhh.. I just translated the exact same sentence from wikipedia in Google translate and got: "The juvenile protection procedure aims to deter and rehabilitate juvenile delinquents, and as a process up to the decision, "send and notify the facts of delinquency to the family court-family court investigator (hereinafter abbreviated as" investigator "). It is customary to go through the flow of "investigation by, etc.-a referee based on the investigation results-determine protective measures or protective measures as necessary"." Not incredible (especially when it starts listing the process), but not as god awful as whatever you got. I'm curious if you omitted some part of the sentence when pasting in. It's also worth noting that this is a pretty out-of-domain legal Japanese sentence.