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Machines to Replace Human Translators? They Already Have: English Tabloid

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OG Pete
OG Pete  Identity Verified
United States
Russian to English
+ ...
Google Translate still has a long way to go... May 15, 2017

As someone who has been watching Google Translate closely, I can state that its machine translation engine has made more progress this year than in the last decade. I can also state that it is now better than weaker human translators. While Google Translate still makes a lot of potentially damaging mistakes, they may no longer be obvious to the untrained eye.

[Edited at 2017-05-15 14:30 GMT]


 
Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 16:50
English to French
+ ...
You may be interested in this thread May 15, 2017

Hello Петро

The change felt is due to a change in structure, now Google has implemented the use of neural networks to its Machine Translation.

Many comments were made on
... See more
Hello Петро

The change felt is due to a change in structure, now Google has implemented the use of neural networks to its Machine Translation.

Many comments were made on the subject in this thread http://www.proz.com/forum/machine_translation_mt/312626-google_gave_their_mt_a_brain_google_neural_machine_translation.html

I have made a YouTube video on the subject, the link is in the above thread.

Many changes indeed to the resources available for translation!

My bests
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Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:50
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Good luck "post-editing" this sentence May 17, 2017

https://twitter.com/LanguageCrawler/status/864652094510432262

Петро wrote:

As someone who has been watching Google Translate closely, I can state that its machine translation engine has made more progress this year than in the last decade. I can also state that it is now better than weaker human translators. While Google Translate still makes a lot of potentially damaging mistakes, they may no longer be obvious to the untrained eye.

[Edited at 2017-05-15 14:30 GMT]


 
OG Pete
OG Pete  Identity Verified
United States
Russian to English
+ ...
Thanks Fi2 n Co and LegalTransform May 19, 2017

Hi Fi2 n Co

Fi2 n Co wrote:

Hello Петро

The change felt is due to a change in structure, now Google has implemented the use of neural networks to its Machine Translation.

Many comments were made on the subject in this thread http://www.proz.com/forum/machine_translation_mt/312626-google_gave_their_mt_a_brain_google_neural_machine_translation.html

I have made a YouTube video on the subject, the link is in the above thread.

Many changes indeed to the resources available for translation!

My bests


I really enjoyed the links, thanks. Looks like neural networks are here to stay.

Hi LegalTransform,

That's hilarious, I just ran that text through Google Translate, and sure enough,
Die Volkswirtschaftslehre (auch Nationalökonomie, Wirtschaftliche Staatswissenschaften oder Sozialökonomie, kurz VWL) ist ein Teilgebiet der Wirtschaftswissenschaft.

still yields

The economics of economics (including economics, economics, economics, economics, economics) is a part of economics.


Priceless!


Marion Scheulenburg
 
Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 16:50
English to French
+ ...
;) May 19, 2017

Peter Gleason wrote:

Priceless!


Hi Peter,
Yes, we should be finding these pearls for a while yet, especially in language pairs where MT hasn’t been optimized yet. 😉
Thanks for your interesting blog:
http://pgleasonjr.blogspot.pt/2017/05/nlp4xl8-machines-to-replace-human.html
I found interesting the linked article:
https://www.adzuna.co.uk/blog/2017/05/15/automation-is-already-major-cause-of-decline-in-vacancies/
My bests


 
OG Pete
OG Pete  Identity Verified
United States
Russian to English
+ ...
;) May 21, 2017

Fi2 n Co wrote:

Peter Gleason wrote:

Priceless!


Hi Peter,
Yes, we should be finding these pearls for a while yet, especially in language pairs where MT hasn’t been optimized yet. 😉
Thanks for your interesting blog:
http://pgleasonjr.blogspot.pt/2017/05/nlp4xl8-machines-to-replace-human.html
I found interesting the linked article:
https://www.adzuna.co.uk/blog/2017/05/15/automation-is-already-major-cause-of-decline-in-vacancies/
My bests

Yes, it would be fun to collect some machine translated nonsense
Your video on the topic was very instructive: https://youtu.be/irYnSJX3Yxw
Thanks!


 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 17:50
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Could be dangerous... May 23, 2017

My father used to tell a story about one of his colleagues, who went into hospital to have his appendix removed... and was discharged with only one leg. (He was a much-loved 'uncle' who in fact had lost a leg on an earlier occasion.)

I have seen a comment about the new Danish Health Platform, which has a section for hospital staff dealing with mastectomies, where they are asked about the 'correct' and the 'remaining' breast.
That is my back translation from the Danish - the or
... See more
My father used to tell a story about one of his colleagues, who went into hospital to have his appendix removed... and was discharged with only one leg. (He was a much-loved 'uncle' who in fact had lost a leg on an earlier occasion.)

I have seen a comment about the new Danish Health Platform, which has a section for hospital staff dealing with mastectomies, where they are asked about the 'correct' and the 'remaining' breast.
That is my back translation from the Danish - the original version asked about the right and the left breast. The Danish word could also mean 'deserted, abandoned' - definitely not the impression intended.
(Danish det rigtige bryst / det efterladte bryst)

In principle it could apply to many other parts of the body, and mistakes would not be funny.

That sort of mistranslation could occur in many languages, not just Danish.

[Edited at 2017-05-24 08:49 GMT]
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Daryo
Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Serbian to English
+ ...
can't find the link right now May 23, 2017

few days ago I stumbled on the story of the head of the team in charge of researching neural networks in Google. A very interesting story, especially because there was zero marketing BS in it.

The interesting point is that when they applied neural networks on Google translate, there was for sure a dramatic improvement in the quality of translated texts, but the head of the team developing neural networks himself never said that even this improved Google translat
... See more
few days ago I stumbled on the story of the head of the team in charge of researching neural networks in Google. A very interesting story, especially because there was zero marketing BS in it.

The interesting point is that when they applied neural networks on Google translate, there was for sure a dramatic improvement in the quality of translated texts, but the head of the team developing neural networks himself never said that even this improved Google translate is anything more than a useful help for human translators!

But once penny-pinchers and professional peddlers of marketing spiel get involved in the act, you get all this nonsense served on the general public, the likes of "Machines to Replace Human Translators? They Already Have ..." (and sometimes readily accepted by those who should know better, but are only interested in cost cutting).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Brain

Here it is:

"... Where you come down on “knowing” versus “doing” has real cultural and social implications. At the party, Schuster came over to me to express his frustration with the paper’s media reception. “Did you see the first press?” he asked me. He paraphrased a headline from that morning, blocking it word by word with his hand as he recited it: GOOGLE SAYS A.I. TRANSLATION IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM HUMANS’. Over the final weeks of the paper’s composition, the team had struggled with this; Schuster often repeated that the message of the paper was “It’s much better than it was before, but not as good as humans.” He had hoped it would be clear that their efforts weren’t about replacing people but helping them. ..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?_r=0

[Edited at 2017-05-23 15:36 GMT]
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Christopher & Rozilene Frye
Christopher & Rozilene Frye  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 13:50
Member (2011)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Worried May 24, 2017

This has been worring me for a long time. Our pairs are EN-PTBR and PTBR-EN. For many years we were extremely successful, busy all the time, turning down work for lack of time. But, over the last year, our business has plummeted. We have had 2 or 3 good months and the rest have been terrible. What is going on? Is it that machine translation is finally taking away work from us? Has anybody else had the same experience?

 
Iseult Harrington
Iseult Harrington  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 17:50
Spanish to English
+ ...
I am not sure if... May 24, 2017

....there is a temporary stagnancy in the translation market due to everyone panicking and/or believing the hype of where Big Data/A.I. is going, and hence stalling the commissioning of translation work, or if agencies/direct clients are actually using MT in a serious way and having the work post-edited....One thing is for sure- it is having a discernable effect, be this temporary or more long-term. I was at a conference last month and talk of feeling like work was suddenly slowing down or becom... See more
....there is a temporary stagnancy in the translation market due to everyone panicking and/or believing the hype of where Big Data/A.I. is going, and hence stalling the commissioning of translation work, or if agencies/direct clients are actually using MT in a serious way and having the work post-edited....One thing is for sure- it is having a discernable effect, be this temporary or more long-term. I was at a conference last month and talk of feeling like work was suddenly slowing down or becoming stagnant was rife...but this could also be a temporary road-block as a result of collective panic and/or misinterpretation of the potential of MT in its current form....Collapse


 
Juliano Martins
Juliano Martins  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 13:50
Member (2008)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
A little worried too May 24, 2017

Hi Christopher & Rozilene,

I am a Brazilian, and work mainly with English-Portuguese too (over 90% of my jobs), just like you.

From 2008 until 2016, I was able to earn more in the respective year than in the previous one. I talked about it here: http://www.proz.com/forum/business_issues/302615-translation_track_record.html

... See more
Hi Christopher & Rozilene,

I am a Brazilian, and work mainly with English-Portuguese too (over 90% of my jobs), just like you.

From 2008 until 2016, I was able to earn more in the respective year than in the previous one. I talked about it here: http://www.proz.com/forum/business_issues/302615-translation_track_record.html

I always have a few bad months during each year. In 2015, for example, I had 2 bad months. In 2016, I also had 2 bad months. What I mean by a bad month is earning around or a little less than 3 thousand USD. A regular or good month would be above 4 thousand USD.

But now in 2017, I have already had 3 bad months, and this only in the first semester.

My earnings in the first 5 months of 2017 represent 37% less than the same period in 2016. This decrease is unprecedented.

Perhaps this year will be the first year worse than the previous one since 2008 for me. Let’s hope not.

Some colleagues told me about MT too as a disruption cause.

[Edited at 2017-05-24 14:32 GMT]
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Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Oh yeah? May 24, 2017

Peter Gleason wrote:

As someone who has been watching Google Translate closely, I can state that its machine translation engine has made more progress this year than in the last decade.


Oh yeah? How about this then:

Associazione Italiana Ulcere Cutanee

is translated by GT as

Italian Association of Cutaneous Ulcers

Whilst I do find it amusing to think of a bunch of Cutaneous Ulcers all getting together for an expenses-paid conference weekend, somehow I don't think that translation is correct.


 
Juliano Martins
Juliano Martins  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 13:50
Member (2008)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
A friend of mine... May 24, 2017

... told me that he was working in a huge project with 25+ translators. Then the translation agency adopted MT and dismissed all human translators.

He participated recently in a webinar about MT and he learned about a company working in a project with over 10 billion words.


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Ha ha May 24, 2017



Ha ha - that made me laugh out loud


 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 17:50
Spanish to English
+ ...
What, me worry? May 24, 2017

I think I may be old enough not to have to worry, as by the time the machines fully take over, I'll probably be pushing up the daisies. However, what baffles me most about all this ballyhoo is the positive reaction to the news by some erstwhile translators, like turkeys voting for Christmas. I actually think that the translator's job will evolve along with the technology, which will probably require people to apply and post-edit it.

 
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Machines to Replace Human Translators? They Already Have: English Tabloid







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