Why is Google Translate Considerably Better than Other Automatic Translators? (reader, sound)

[VGravitas]

I've used automatic translators in the past, and they were awful. The translations that they produced seldom ever made sense.


Yet, Google translate produces translations are much more accurate and understandable.


Why is that? How does the science behind Google Translate differ from that of other automatic translators?

[Bo]

Inside Google Translate

[jtur88]

The true test of a translation is whether a joke can go through several languages. I entered this one in the machine:

A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.” The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?” The boy takes the quarters and leaves. “What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!” Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store. “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?” The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!”

After going through Greek, Malay, Japanese, and Finnish, it came back like this:

"Please have a look at the same time to prove it to you. This is crazy children of the world." I, on the other hand, the young son of a barber come barber and barber whispers to his customer, put a dollar bill in the other two quarters, said panggilanbudak more than that, "boy, what are you? Want 'son took quarters and leaves. "I do not? Do not you tell me," said the scissors. Later, when the customer is away, the boys look like the same ice cream shop, he said, "he has never learned." "Hello, I would like to ask you, why you never take dollars instead of quarters? Children," the boy licking a cone replied that day, "so I take the dollar game, it's over!"

I'm assuming that "panggilanbudak" is a Malay word that was not recognized by the onward translation to Japanese, and once that happens, the chain is broken.

As a test, I also ran:

The editor was not content with the content of the work.

To Hungarian and Bengali aned back,

Content was not satisfied with the work.

In the original, listening to the English reader, both "content" were pronounced the same, with equal stress on both syllables..

It also cannot deal with "read" as present and past tense homonyms:


I want to read what you have read.
Comes back as
I want to see what you have.

Many languages use the same word for "read" and "see", and once the translator goes into that hole, there is no way to dig back out unless something in the context makes it obvious..

[irman]

Originally Posted by jtur88

Many languages use the same word for "read" and "see",

Just like in English, one word can mean different things.

The word *leaves*, could mean *get away from one position* or *move away*.
It also could mean those things that hang on the branches of tree ...

I took that same *joke* and had it translate to my mother's tongue, so I should know if halfway correct or not. What I found is that the translation was *pretty darn good* if you take into account that the human brain can fill in the gaps, if there are any.

Now when I do it the reverse way, NOT correcting the translation, it is really bad.

So ... , I think going *one way only* it does a pretty good job.
Going both ways, much gets lost ...

I also corrected into the proper grammar and then had it go back to English.
Result was about the same, meaning, not grammatically correct but any decent person with some halfway decent brain could understand the meaning of it and chuckle (because of the joke).

Because I am a polyglot, I have worked with a university on translation programmes, and the hardest thing was to properly interpret the true meaning of the whole sentence.
I think the biggest problem in these programmes is that the *sound as* parameter is too often used.
The next problem is that just one word in English, can often NOT be translated with one word only but needs some kind of description.

When I read the first translation of the joke, it sounded like some person trying to speak the foreign language, with a a limited knowledge of the proper grammar.

Any person who speaks more than one language, knows that the grammar part of any language is the most difficult to master.

The last thing I did was look at the first translation, then rewrote the original text in English, but used other words to describe the situation where the translator *failed*.
The next translation into my mother's tongue came out almost perfect.

So the difference is that *I* knew what was going on, but the translator did not.

LBNL, I do simultaneous translation during meetings and after I am done, I am utterly exhausted.
Trying to remember the whole sentence (you often have to wait until the end of the sentence to figure out the true meaning of the sentence) and translate like crazy, in the mean time listening to what the speaker says while you say the translated sentence, is very difficult !

Here an example of one of those cases, it was a joke, where I was not able to properly translate.
It went like this. (very shortened version)
A very religious painter tries to save money by constantly thinning out the paint by adding thinners.
After a while, his guardian angel tells him:
Repaint, you sinner !

Now how would you translate that ? Because it is a *play on words*, this joke only works in English !
Strangely most of the audience snickered, but how many really understood the meaning ?

[irman]

Originally Posted by Anwareljana

for now iam using Double translation service as i can get double translation results one from Google and other from Bing so i can compare between them and choose the best result for me here is service link

This only works if the translated sentence is in a language which you know.
If you do not know the language, how would you know which one is better ?

If you *do* know the language, why even use a translator ?

[squirrels]

Originally Posted by irman

This only works if the translated sentence is in a language which you know.
If you do not know the language, how would you know which one is better ?

If you *do* know the language, why even use a translator ?

I suppose it could be useful if translating something detailed or technical from a foreign language to your native language. Get two messes of English trying to convey the same thing and you'd have a better idea of what the original really meant.

There better be other equal alternatives to this resource. Otherwise, without enough options. Able to be called basic needs of survival when used appropriately. Although, I must say Foreigners comprehend English so often since especially the middle of second decade in 21st Century(2015-2019). Ironic, when people in other countries didn't learn this language quite yet, the Internet support imperative already almost didn't even exist.

[mordant]

If you had super-competent, even expert human translators for each pair of languages, if you went through several languages and then back to the original it would be pretty awful -- though probably not as awful as in the translated joke example above. Translation is not an exact science. Differences in context and metaphor alone make it so.

I know just enough French to be dangerous and I'm always amused at the literal translation.

I have a headache => J'ai mal à la tête => I have wrongness of the head
I am in pain => J'ai mal => I have wrongness

You would never construct an English sentence like the French one. "Wrong" or "wrongness" is way too vague for the specific malady of "headache", and the literal English translation of the French sounds like a confession to mental illness. The second one is at least a bit akin to "something is wrong" or "I don't feel right" but to the English brain it still sounds more like nausea or general malaise (French root word there!) than the more specific "pain".

Whether through a set of purpose-built rules or through machine learning, a translation algorithm would need a list of these idiomatic tics in order to correctly translate in either direction.

[The Grandeur]

All translations seem bad to me.