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I guess this would also be in a legal grey zone/break TOS, but I wonder if they could reuse the offline models the official Google Translate app downloads. > w

by judge2020 5y ago

I guess this would also be in a legal grey zone/break TOS, but I wonder if they could reuse the offline models the official Google Translate app downloads. > worst case you could just self host a translation service

whimsicalism 5y ago
What? How would this violate ToS? iirc even the Google translate app does on device translation. And worst case you could just self host a translation service. Google's translation is good, but it's not that much better than what you can get OSS. e: Misunderstood your comment (I believe the quote was at the top and you edited), now I see that you were referring to your idea as the potential ToS violation. I agree, you can't violate IP law in your app.
- judge2020 5y ago
  As in, the translate models are owned by Google and AFAIK they don't allow anyone, even other developers, to use them. It's against ToS to use intellectual property/code/ml models/etc without permission from the owner > 11.2 If You use third-party materials, You represent and warrant that You have the right to distribute the third-party material in the Product. You agree that You will not submit material to Google Play that is subject to third -party Intellectual Property Rights unless You are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to submit the material. https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html#:~:text=11.2%20If%20You,submit%20the%20material https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreeme....
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  > Google's translation is good, but it's not that much better than what you can get OSS. Disagree on this one. For the languages of the European Union and a couple other outliers, sure it's close. For the long, long tail of languages software developers typically don't care about and are outside the wealthy world Google is the only thing that is remotely intelligible.
mikaraento 5y ago
We do offer an official SDK that does that, see https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/language/translation https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/language/translation (I work for Google but do not speak for it)
- MiroF 5y ago
  I would trust a 3rd party on-device service slightly more, given that Google's incentives aren't exactly aligned with making that service high quality.
  - smeyer 5y ago
    I don't think their incentives are exactly misaligned with it being high quality, either. If better translation can get folks to see more ads, they might not care much about losing out potential api-based translation revenue.

whimsicalism 5y ago

What? How would this violate ToS? iirc even the Google translate app does on device translation. And worst case you could just self host a translation service. Google's translation is good, but it's not that much better than what you can get OSS. e: Misunderstood your comment (I believe the quote was at the top and you edited), now I see that you were referring to your idea as the potential ToS violation. I agree, you can't violate IP law in your app.

judge2020 5y ago
As in, the translate models are owned by Google and AFAIK they don't allow anyone, even other developers, to use them. It's against ToS to use intellectual property/code/ml models/etc without permission from the owner > 11.2 If You use third-party materials, You represent and warrant that You have the right to distribute the third-party material in the Product. You agree that You will not submit material to Google Play that is subject to third -party Intellectual Property Rights unless You are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to submit the material. https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html#:~:text=11.2%20If%20You,submit%20the%20material https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreeme....
3pt14159 5y ago
> Google's translation is good, but it's not that much better than what you can get OSS. Disagree on this one. For the languages of the European Union and a couple other outliers, sure it's close. For the long, long tail of languages software developers typically don't care about and are outside the wealthy world Google is the only thing that is remotely intelligible.

mikaraento 5y ago

We do offer an official SDK that does that, see https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/language/translation https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/language/translation (I work for Google but do not speak for it)

MiroF 5y ago
I would trust a 3rd party on-device service slightly more, given that Google's incentives aren't exactly aligned with making that service high quality.
- smeyer 5y ago
  I don't think their incentives are exactly misaligned with it being high quality, either. If better translation can get folks to see more ads, they might not care much about losing out potential api-based translation revenue.