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Please take a look at this:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-08-04-n48.html
Machine translation isn't good enough yet. But if human beings help to increase the databank of a company like Google, I think many of us will be unemployed soon.
It's like teaching your competitor how to do the job.
Very interesting, but instead of a competence for translators and translation companies, it looks like a competitor for the actual translation marketplaces.
Related the competition between machines and humans in the future translation landscape, there were and interesting thread at these forums:
http://www.english-spanish-translato...ns-future.html
Google's translation center: Language lessons for the Googlebot?
Google looks set to launch a beta test of a document translation service, a new move in the company's efforts to break down language barriers.
With the service, the company will connect people who need documents translated with humans who will be paid to do so, according to the Google Translation Center information page. The site was spotted by sharp eyes at the Google Blogoscoped blog.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...cener_logo.png
(Credit: Google)
"Google Translation Center is the fast and easy way to get translations for your content. Simply upload your document, choose your translation language, and choose from our registry of professional and volunteer translators. If a translator accepts, you should receive your translated content back as soon as it's ready," the site said.
Google prefers to rely on computer algorithms rather than humans, so at first glance the Google Translation Center looks somewhat anomalous, even though Google is only playing a middleman role. But it's possible that the human translators might be gradually improving Google's machine translation technology as they work, in effect helping to put themselves out of a job.
That's because Google's translation system uses a statistical model that works better the more it can compare the same text in two different languages. And Google evidently will track translation work in its database; according to the center's introduction for translators, "our translation search feature matches your current translation with previous translations, so you don't have to translate over and over again."
Google is fervently interested in better machine translation. With it, it can use its search technology to link people with data around the world, regardless of language barriers, making its search engine significantly more powerful.
Wanted: More Rosetta Stones
Google's translation technique essentially relies on having as many Rosetta Stone-like documents as possible. The more documents it has in two languages, the better able it is to match words and phrases from one language to another, according to a recent speech by Jeff Dean, a Google fellow who works Google's computing infrastructure.
"By computing statistics over all words and phrases, you...get a model of word-by-word and phrase-by-phrase replacements," Dean said. Machine translation often produces awkward results today, but "the impact of having a really large language model makes the sentences flow a lot more easily."
The screenshot below, from Google, shows the online interface a Google translator apparently will see. It shows text in two languages, with the passage broken down into chunks of text. It also suggests a previous translation of one chunk, offering a "use suggestion" button to employ it. It's not clear if the previous translation draws just on that individual translator's work or a larger collection.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...ion_demo_3.png
Google Translation Center offers tools to speed translation.
(Credit: Google)
Based on the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy method for rating translation accuracy, Google scored first place in a 2005 evaluation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology evaluation.
Google was mum about the project. "We're always looking at new ways of providing tools for users to connect with each other, share information, and improve access to information on the internet, but we don't have any new details to share at this time," the company said in a statement.
Paying the middleman
It's a time-tested business to be the middleman who connects customers to those willing to pay for a product or service, but the Internet has taken the role to new heights by more easily enabling that process on a national and sometimes global scale. For example, Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk, Serebra Connect, and Elance can help companies that need tasks done find people who can do them.
But the Google Translation Center seems to have a different approach. Translators get access to free Google tools, and it appears Google isn't involved in any payment transactions, according to the site.
"Google Translation Center provides a venue for you to enter into and complete translation transactions. Except when you use Google Translation Center as provided in Section 4, Google is not involved in any transactions in Google Translation Center. Your interaction with any third party participant(s) or user(s) within Google Translation Center, including payment and delivery of goods and services...are solely between you and such third party participant(s) or user(s) and Google is not involved in such dealings," according to the terms of service. Section 4, titled "Google Participation," says just that "Google and/or its subsidiaries and affiliates may use Google Translation Center from time to time."
So what's in it for Google?
Of course, Google has a strong search-ad business that it uses to subsidize any number of efforts that may not be profitable for years, if indeed ever. After all, Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
But even if Google doesn't charge a percentage, improving automated translation could be a powerful incentive as Google tries to keep its core product, the search engine, competitive.
Google's translation technology is available through the Google Translate site, but the company also has technology called Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) that builds translation into its search engine.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...n_demo_1-2.png
This Google screenshot shows the interface to the Google Translate Service.
(Credit: Google)
Search increasingly is the gateway by which people discover what's on the Internet, so building automated two-way translation into the process could open up the very parts of the Internet that today are available but effectively hidden by language barriers.
CLIR can translate a search query into a foreign tongue then translate the answer back into the search results. Clicking a link produces the translated version of that page.
For example, a search in Russian for Tony Blair's biography will present an option, in Russian and presented at the bottom of the search results page, to search pages written in English. Clicking on a link then translates the English page into Russian.
Google executives have given indications recently about just how grand the company's ambitions are for the automated language translation. The company wants people from any major language to understand any other.
"We will eventually do 100 by 100 languages, to take this set of languages and convert to another," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a June talk. "That alone will have a phenomenal impact on an open society," he said, a reference to concerns many have expressed about Google's censored search results in countries such as China.
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From CNET @:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-100....html?hhTest=1
Maybe is more than a translation marketplace because they could use the translations for create better machine translations.
In the short term the other translation marketplaces are dead, in the long term.....
You were right Julio.Quote:
Originally Posted by Julio Jaubert
"En el largo plazo estamos todos muertos", Keynes. Además de qué vale preocuparse de lo que está fuera de nuestro control: Google como Microsoft, ya tienen como objetivo, todo, y cuando digo todo, digo todo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Professor
No es tanto preocuparse por qué hacer para evitarlo. Más bien es un aviso para prepararse contra lo inevitable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gustavo Lucardi
Personalmente creo que una base de datos con textos originales y sus traducciones sería un revoltijo inútil, cuanto más porque depende de la calidad que ofrezcan quienes traducen. Pero está claro hacia dónde apuntan estas compañías.
Sí, es clarísimo hacia donde apuntan, pero el 2010 está a la vuelta, y no hicmos contacto... :) Lo que quiero decir es que puede pasar tanto tiempo... Los que debieran preocuparse mucho en corto plazo son los marketplaces, van a tener una competencia importante en el corto plazo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Julio Jaubert
A lo mejor no, a lo mejor lo pueden hacer con ley de estadísticas, algoritmos y demás fórmulas de la misma forma que lograron indexar Internet bastante bien.Quote:
Originally Posted by Julio Jaubert
No hay que subestimar a una empresa como Google, de todas formas, probablemente les pase lo mismo que a Microsoft: "El que mucho abarca poco aprieta".
I've been reading all of the viewpoints on this matter. And the way I stand on it hasn't changed at all : I don't think we translators will have troubles getting clients in the future ahead as technology moves forward. No machine can ever take over a human being's potential for fulfillment and/or processing power. Ever. Having said that, I definitely share someone's viewpoint here : it all boils down to whether or not the client is really interested in a quality-based work. If he/she wants a shabby job, that's fine. Google's translation technology will help him/her do things by going through the motions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gustavo Lucardi
Of course, if we talk about turnaround time, machines will sweep us all away ! They will achieve the work not just in a timely manner but even more than that ! -Nonetheless, I remain skeptical about their accuracy.
So, people..don't lose heart ! Here we are.. let's keep making our clientele..
Regards,
seeker50.
I agree with you. I'm not worried about job's quality, human beings are much better than machines (now, I don't know about the future in 10, 50, 100 or 500 years).Quote:
Originally Posted by seeker50
Anyway, talking about the present, there are many clients that have changed from human to machine translation. One could think we are talking about handbooks or patents that never would be read. But not. I'm talking about the image of the enterprise in Internet. Please check this: http://www.emmonspanish.com/05-06/sp...2x4uctrii2.htm
No matter what we think, the problem is that clients believe machines are good translators.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Julio Jaubert
Even if clients think or believe machines are good translators they're going to realize that it isn't, I cannot imagine a book like Da Vinci code translated by google, and i have seen a lot of websites that have been translated by a machine and they are not a good translation... I think we are always going to be necessary ... or at least un a recent future.
I don't think clients believe machines are good translators. I think machines can serve a particular purpose when one does not understand a single word one's reading. If I want to have a general idea of what a Dutch page is about, a machine translator serves this purpose.
Now, can human translators be replaced? Well... I think it is possible, in medium future. Machines are accomplishing things we humans could have never dreamed of in the past. Factories filled with workers are now replaced by machines. Why not in the cognitive aspect? To me this is where we are headed, we can't do anything to prevent it, but we can do many things to adjust ourselves to it and evolve.
I agree, no machine can ever replace a human (at least not yet anyway), but I think what's good for Google is good for everthing we do online too. Look at what the net has done in such a short time 1995=18,000 websites, 2007=1,000,000,000+
I think that a true translator would really and finally open the door to international commerce online because as I have a bilingual blog that requires manual edition of my spanish entries, I'd much rather have that part automated. Think about it, if I could have a plugin on my blog that would automatically translate my posts into spanish but ACCURATELY not the way Google Translate does now. That would be wonderful as it would allow us to later take that digital ability and with technology evolving, eventually lead to vocal processors that can hear understand and replicate the language fast enough where maybe someday we will have some of those "universal translators" like they have on the Star Trek show.
I'd really like the idea of knowing I could go anywhere in the world and that I could understand everyone without carrying a little book of terms.
Hola Julio:Quote:
Originally Posted by Julio Jaubert
Recién veo esto. Es una obra maestra del disparate. Parece hecho mal a propósito. Gracias por el aporte de humor, porque otra cosa no puede ser, aunque sea involuntario.
Saludos muchos,
Sí... y la gente además piensa que traducir es "soplar y hacer botella", la cosa más fácil del mundo... digo yo, ¿para qué estudiaremos tanto?Quote:
Originally Posted by Julio Jaubert
:rolleyes:
Un "thread" muy interesante... gracias Julio:)
I've always noticed how translation software tends to grab "segments" and ask you to assign a translation, for your TM. But what's most interesting to me is that I have to break out of that model very often to actually get a good translation. It isn't only about the words, but about the correct meaning and style.
Sometimes I get a suggested word and if I look at it isolated from the rest of the message it is spot on. But when you read the whole translation, you come to realize that word is wrong! you need a synonym, or a different sentence construction, etc.
So, even statistically speaking, you will get a great deal of errors in such translations. Computers don't understand the language to effectively restate information in a different language. And, since there are so many terms which are only appropriate in a particular context, I believe we will still have a job... of course, as long as our work is the best quality possible =)
But of course, times change and eventually, computers may get good enough! But I, for one, will not worry too much about it.
The only online translator that I have ever returned to is SpanishDict. Yes, it is a machine, but their English to Spanish translation is thorough enough for me, plus they've got a great dictionary feature so I can look up words I still don't know.