Google-de-gook
Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 09:50AM
Google have been offering free web-based machine translation for a number of years, essentially the service is for people to translate small pieces of text so that they can quickly get a basic understanding of what is being said in another language. Free machine translation is nothing new. Before Google got in on the act, Babel Fish was one of the most popular.
However, there is a fundamental difference between the technology behind Google Translate and Babel Fish.
While Babel Fish uses a rule-based system, i.e. formulas that dictate how words in one language should be replaced by words from another language, Google uses a statistical system that harvests many millions of words from existing translated material and produces translation through a system of statistical analysis.
This is an interesting approach, even though it raises a few questions in terms of the intellectual property rights of the original translators and / or their clients, but then again the 'public domain' has a lot to answer for in this regard.
Those issues aside, is it any good? Should translators and agencies alike be shaking in their boots and reconsidering their career options?
We don't think so. The idea of machines (or software) producing smooth, well written translation is still pure fantasy. Human translation is not under any serious threat until artificial intelligence becomes a part of our everyday lives. When machines become self-aware and can actually comprehend what it is they are being asked to translate (let's face it, if a machine is self-aware, it is only polite to ask), only then there will be even an outside chance for some useable computer generated translation.
Assuming, of course, that an intelligent self-aware computer wouldn't decide it had better things to do than translate stuff, it may opt instead for taking over the world, or making all the telephones on the planet ring at the same time, or something geeky like that.
How does Google's statistics-based system compare with Yahoo's rule-based Babel Fish? Find out here.
