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CommentFriday, March 2, 2007

Google Robot No Speak-o The Language-o

If you're one of those bilingual types, Google wants your help. Though Google has an automatic translation tool, it's difficult to teach robots the nuances of language – prepositions and prepositional phrases appear to be especially troubling – and the search company is inviting human editors to lend a hand, er, voice.

"[T]ranslation is a very hard problem," writes Google International Product Manager Jeff Chin, "and we know that when you use translate.google.com to read web pages in other languages, you sometimes encounter translations that we get wrong. We have a system that can learn to translate better if we know where the problems are."

The new system allows users (especially well-versed in language) to review translations provided by the tool and suggest a better way to say whatever message the original writer intended.

Hovering over the translation brings up the "Suggest a better translation" link. It's not an automatic contribution, like editing Wikipedia, but the translation will be considered for future updates to the Google Translate service.

Currently, the feature seems only available in languages with non-Roman alphabets: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and Russian. That's too bad, considering the translations coming out of the Spanish and French translations.

Here's a fun one, translated from a French site:

"Do you allow me, in my gratitude for the benevolent reception that you made me one day, to have the preoccupation with a your right glory and to say to you that your star, if happy up to now, is threatened of most ashamed, of most ineffaceable of the spots?"

Or from a Spanish forum:

"The governor of Coahuila had a sudden starting of memory and, exactly the anniversary eve of the Paste tragedy of Conchos, one remembered that from the federal Executive they pressed it to blame to innocent, of whom did not give the name until they removed it with tirabuzón."

Right…Just for kicks, let's do the old English to Spanish to English trick. Here's that famous sentence from the Declaration of Independence in refried bean form:

"We carried out these truths to be evident in himself, that all men equal we are created, of which that is equipped by their creator with certain rights unalienable, that between these they are life, freedom and the search of the happiness."

Just doesn't have that Jeffersonian lyricism anymore, does it?

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what lanquage does robot come from?

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