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| User | Thread poster: Barnaby Capel-Dunn Eric Schmidt says next big thing for Google could be online translation (Shape of Things to Come?) |
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Barnaby Capel-Dunn 
France
French to English
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And I absolutely agree with you. It's raw processing power that seems to hold the key to the future.
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Joan Berglund
United States
 Member (Feb 2008)
French to English
| | well I hear Google is a nice place to work | May 2 |
On-site fitness centers and organic food in the cafeteria. We could all work for Google. Actually I guess I should keep my personal training certification up, so far trainers haven't been replaced by computers. Although I did see an ad for some home exercise machine that announced "counts reps backwards, just like having a real personal trainer!" Not even true, PTs count forward, it's group fitness instructors that count backwards. We may do a couple other things for clients as well though, at least I like to think so. But the machine translation scare has been around for most of my career, maybe I will be ready to retire by the time they get really good. On the other hand, I never understood why the clients that want stuff done by insane deadlines, so that even a good translator could not do an adequate job, and then offer so little money that no good translator would touch it, don't just use Google. At least there wouldn't be typos.
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Williamson
United Kingdom
Flemish to English
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| | Don't forget your discount.... | May 2 |
And of course, don't forget: Just like Trados, "Professional translators" (future professional editors) have to give a discount, because they used M.T.
The shape of things to come: Google buying Proz.com?
[Edited at 2008-05-02 15:34]
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mediamatrix
Chile
Spanish to English
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Barnaby Capel-Dunn wrote:
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"I [Eric Schmidt ] don't understand how it works, but to watch a computer - literally watch it - read something in English, dissect what it's about, translate it into a language that I don't speak and having that other person say, 'Wow, that's incredible,' to me, that's magic.
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That quote suggests to me that this Schmidt fellow is an impressionable young man with a very superficial understanding of the real world. I doubt he'll get far in professional life...
MediaMatrix
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Lawyer-Linguist
Portugal
Member (2004)
Dutch to English
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Barnaby Capel-Dunn wrote:
"But scaremongering and constant downers about the future of the industry from someone who by his/her own admission doesn't want to be in it anyhow isn't helpful at all."
I suppose you're referring to me?! But when did I ever say that I didn't want to be in the profession? |
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For the record, not referring to you at all 
[Edited at 2008-05-02 16:15]
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Niraja Nanjundan
India
Member (2005)
German to English
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[quote]RobinB wrote:
..... German-to-English is one of the most difficult language pairs for MT, always has been.
Robin |
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Believe it or not, it's also one of the most difficult pairs for human translators!
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Gennady Lapardin
Russian Federation
Italian to Russian
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I like their third pop-up window Propose Better Translation. That's really tough ! I imagine how many people could kill their time proposing better translations of e.g. on-line fiction.
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Lia Fail
Spain
Spanish to English
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Jenny Forbes wrote:
.... perhaps in some distant (or not-so-distant) future, translators will all be employed on designing, tweaking and perfecting translation programs?
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As Daina said, "disambiguation is the problem when you get to trickier texts", and that goes for human translators too.
Disambiguation isn't even an issue for MT if it's very restricted and refined ... that is, MT works very well when it is extremely restricted (eg, METEO weather reports in Quebec), so much so that it isn't actually required to disambiguate.
[Edited at 2008-05-03 01:04]
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Steven Capsuto
United States
Member (2004)
French to English
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| | Yes, there's a difference | May 3 |
Daina Jauntirans wrote:
That's not entirely true. Machine translation has always been able to handle restricted language well. As I recall, the classic examples in the literature are Caterpillar manuals (written using simplified English rules) and weather reports in Quebec (repetitive, limited vocabulary). If the proper rules are set up for standard types of articles, I can see how MT could handle that well. Disambiguation is the problem when you get to trickier texts. |
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My usual test for many years has been to feed in news articles and editorials from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and see how they come out in English. The subjects are wide-ranging, not the sort of restricted, predictable texts you mentioned. The results lately have been astonishing compared to what they were even two years ago.
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Allesklar
Australia
Member (2005)
English to German
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Well, if or when it happens, I'll buy myself an ice cream van instead of a Trados upgrade and live a happy life - just imagine, smiling children, no deadlines and all the ice cream you can eat... [fades into daydreaming]
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rebeccalyne
United States
French to English
| | Worried but not defeated | May 3 |
This is an interesting thread. As someone who has translated for over 15 years I too have been worried about the advent of better translation software...even more so since I became a freelancer 5 years ago.
However, like in any industry that changes constantly, it simply means that the professional must adapt. If we are not adaptable, we will die on the vine as individual translators.
I think today any translator must not only specialize in their translation business, but also should an arsensal of additional talents that can be commercialized, like interpreting and of course writing, either creative, technical or otherwise.
No panic is needed. We just always need to look for additional ways to use our skills.
Cheers,
Rebecca
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dgmaga
Germany
English to Spanish
| | I agree: it is better and more used than ever before | May 3 |
Steven Capsuto wrote:
Daina Jauntirans wrote:
That's not entirely true. Machine translation has always been able to handle restricted language well. As I recall, the classic examples in the literature are Caterpillar manuals (written using simplified English rules) and weather reports in Quebec (repetitive, limited vocabulary). If the proper rules are set up for standard types of articles, I can see how MT could handle that well. Disambiguation is the problem when you get to trickier texts. |
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My usual test for many years has been to feed in news articles and editorials from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and see how they come out in English. The subjects are wide-ranging, not the sort of restricted, predictable texts you mentioned. The results lately have been astonishing compared to what they were even two years ago. |
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I agree totally with Steven.
I think it is hard to deny that that MT is used now more than ever before.
There are more situations now than before where having a more or less imperfect text translated very quickly at a very low cost provides a much more cost-efficient solution.
In part, the reson is that MT is more usable in more language pairs than before.
Having said that, I don't think that translators will be out of work any time soon.
Humans normally translate better than computers and it is always good to review a human made translation.
If computers ever translate as well as humans, there will still be a need to review their translations.
Right now, with computers and CAT tools an individual translator can translate many more words per week than 20 years ago with a typewriter.
Are there fewer translators now than 20 years ago, on the contrary!
As MT gets better, more translations will be produced and there will be a greater need to edit the MT output.
There will be plenty of work for linguists but I am sure it will be different.
Daniel
 
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FarkasAndras
Hungary
English to Hungarian
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..... German-to-English is one of the most difficult language pairs for MT, always has been. That's why the quality of MT results for Romance, Slavic, Nordic and many Asian languages has traditionally outstripped De-En.
No doubt Albanian MT will flourish once there's sufficient commercial demand for it.
Robin [/quote]
How on earth would a germanic-to-germanic combo be among the most difficult? Tougher than asian languages (to english, say)?
No way.
BTW, I'm lucky in that department By the time machine translation into/from Hungarian takes over I'll have retired (and I'm 25 now).
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Williamson
United Kingdom
Flemish to English
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mediamatrix wrote:
Barnaby Capel-Dunn wrote:
...
"I [Eric Schmidt ] don't understand how it works, but to watch a computer - literally watch it - read something in English, dissect what it's about, translate it into a language that I don't speak and having that other person say, 'Wow, that's incredible,' to me, that's magic.
... |
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That quote suggests to me that this Schmidt fellow is an impressionable young man with a very superficial understanding of the real world. I doubt he'll get far in professional life...
MediaMatrix |
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This Schmidt fellow is not an impressionable young man, but a CEO of Google Inc, currently in his early 50-ies, worth 6 billion $. That means the money to attract the best and the brightest and get things going, like the combination of databases, TMs, (semantics), AI, speech-recognition and robotics.....
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mediamatrix
Chile
Spanish to English
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| | Well, thanks, Williamson, that's most enlightening! | May 3 |
Williamson wrote:
mediamatrix wrote:
Barnaby Capel-Dunn wrote:
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"I [Eric Schmidt ] don't understand how it works, but to watch a computer - literally watch it - read something in English, dissect what it's about, translate it into a language that I don't speak and having that other person say, 'Wow, that's incredible,' to me, that's magic.
... |
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That quote suggests to me that this Schmidt fellow is an impressionable young man with a very superficial understanding of the real world. I doubt he'll get far in professional life...
MediaMatrix |
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This Schmidt fellow is not an impressionable young man, but a CEO of Google Inc, currently in his early 50-ies, worth 6 billion $. That means the money to attract the best and the brightest and get things going, like the combination of databases, TMs, (semantics), AI, speech-recognition and robotics..... |
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But of course I checked up on this errr, what's his name? - Schmidt? - before commenting on his professional prospects - and I know for a fact that he's not the sort of guy I would ever want in my company.
Would you, Williamson, want him in yours?
MediaMatrix
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The translation workplace 
