4 ms·

Off topic, but I just wanted to point out that Google Translate is really great. The quality of this translation is probably better than many human non-professi

by erikano 12y ago

Off topic, but I just wanted to point out that Google Translate is really great. The quality of this translation is probably better than many human non-professional-translators would write.

BorisMelnik 12y ago
I was just thinking about how exceptionally well this article was translated. More often than not I can't even understand the gist of what the translation is. Maybe some languages are better than others.
- negativity 12y ago
  ...or perhaps a certain threshold of translation requests triggers a flag on the resource, and it's regarded as a high-traffic asset, and gets queued for mechanical turk translation and review by a professional translation service?
  - gedrap 12y ago
    I just tried translating Lithuanian -> English. Yup Google Translate is that good. Even for not wide spread languages like Lithuanian.
aeflash 12y ago
I think Swedish to English is pretty easy to do automatically to some satisfaction -- there are a lot of similarities in grammar and most words have direct translations. Chinese to English or Japanese to English with that level of clarity would be much more impressive.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  Google translate is completely worthless between chinese and english (either direction). I'm baffled every time I see people praising it.
- _delirium 12y ago
  The short sentences and relatively simple grammar also remove a lot of the common sources of intelligibility-threatening Google Translate errors. With German->English the most common serious error I find is that it'll unwind a compound sentence the wrong way: matches up verbs with the wrong clauses, orders clauses in an order that ends up nonsensical in English, etc. Scandinavian languages don't tend to use complex, multi-clause sentence constructions, so there's less opportunity to completely screw up the structure.

4 ms·

Off topic, but I just wanted to point out that Google Translate is really great. The quality of this translation is probably better than many human non-professi

by erikano 12y ago

Off topic, but I just wanted to point out that Google Translate is really great. The quality of this translation is probably better than many human non-professional-translators would write.

BorisMelnik 12y ago
I was just thinking about how exceptionally well this article was translated. More often than not I can't even understand the gist of what the translation is. Maybe some languages are better than others.
- negativity 12y ago
  ...or perhaps a certain threshold of translation requests triggers a flag on the resource, and it's regarded as a high-traffic asset, and gets queued for mechanical turk translation and review by a professional translation service?
  - gedrap 12y ago
    I just tried translating Lithuanian -> English. Yup Google Translate is that good. Even for not wide spread languages like Lithuanian.
aeflash 12y ago
I think Swedish to English is pretty easy to do automatically to some satisfaction -- there are a lot of similarities in grammar and most words have direct translations. Chinese to English or Japanese to English with that level of clarity would be much more impressive.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  Google translate is completely worthless between chinese and english (either direction). I'm baffled every time I see people praising it.
- _delirium 12y ago
  The short sentences and relatively simple grammar also remove a lot of the common sources of intelligibility-threatening Google Translate errors. With German->English the most common serious error I find is that it'll unwind a compound sentence the wrong way: matches up verbs with the wrong clauses, orders clauses in an order that ends up nonsensical in English, etc. Scandinavian languages don't tend to use complex, multi-clause sentence constructions, so there's less opportunity to completely screw up the structure.