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How good is Google Translate?

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    Administrator 6StringJazzer's Avatar
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    How good is Google Translate?

    A new thread to divert the hijack in another thread.

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    Administrator 6StringJazzer's Avatar
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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    If we put in the phrase

    It can, 99.9% of the time if you use proper English that is stored in their databases, instead of new-age slang that we are so used to.

    and translate to Spanish, then take that result and translate back to English, we get:

    You can, 99.9% of the time, if you use the proper English that is stored in your databases, rather than the new age jargon we are so used to.

    It gets the idea across but makes a critical error in the possessive changing from their to your. This is a common error in machine translation from English to romance languages because the possessive in English agrees with the possessor, where in romance languages it agrees with the thing that is possessed. In romance languages one gets the meaning from context, but AI translators like Google Translate can't match a human for that.

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    Forum Moderator Glenn Kennedy's Avatar
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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    It's fine for casual stuff, where 100% accuracy is not required. I wouldn't want my surgeon to use it to translate instructions on where to insert the scalpel, which way to turn it, and how far to slice !!
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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    This being said, what one mostly encounters on the Net is more Globish than English proper, so let's not be "more Catholic than the Pope"

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    'creamier than the pope' I'd formulate.



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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pepe Le Mokko View Post
    so let's not be "more Catholic than the Pope"
    hey now! don't make fun of my catholic life, dude! by the way, you guys seen this!?

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/20/europ...cli/index.html

    hackers!!! there are no better ones than those in Italy. But then again, Israel has got their fair share. see here:

    https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...i-crown-prince

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_o...ezos%27s_phone

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    hey now! don't make fun of my catholic life, dude!
    I suppose that is intended as a joke?

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pepe Le Mokko View Post
    I suppose that is intended as a joke?
    rarely am I serious in this ridiculous place we call Earth.

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    ENGLISH INPUT:
    this is a proper sentence in the english language.

    GERMAN OUTPUT:
    Dies ist ein richtiger Satz in der englischen Sprache.

    GERMAN INPUT:
    Dies ist ein richtiger Satz in der englischen Sprache.

    ENGLISH OUTPUT:
    This is a correct sentence in the English language.

    not too bad, it doesn't seem to me!

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    Unfair to use it in a romance language without a neuter pronoun.

    English -> German -> English: It can happen 99.9% of the time that you are using correct English stored in the databases instead of the New Age slang we are used to.

    English -> Russian -> English: This is possible 99.9% of the time if you use the correct English that is stored in their databases, instead of the new era slang we are so used to.

    English -> Arabic -> English: It can, 99.9% of the time if you use the correct English stored in their databases, rather than the modern colloquial we are used to.

    English -> Korean -> English: 99.9% of the time is possible if we use the proper English stored in our database instead of the new era slang we are used to.

    Which is closer?

    It seems it helps for different languages to have similar pronoun structures, e.g., English, which is in some ways still Saxon, and German not so distant cousins. Interesting that Arabic is close to English and German in this respect but with a vocabulary which seems to lack slang. Not surprising to me that Korean is furthest off due to grammar and vocabulary.

    I figure there's also a problem translating modern English in which damn few native speakers remember it possesses a subjunctive mood into languages whose native speakers do a much better job incorporating the subjunctive. That'd be my guess for why the German route eliminated the if. Then again, German being German may note the 99.9% EMPLOYS probability rather than IMPLYING a hypothetical, thus if is ill-considered in this instance. What I mean is that different languages WILL reflect different cultural perspectives, so Germans may well view probability differently than English or Americans, Russians, Arabs, Koreans, maybe others, maybe even everyone else.

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    I'd expect greater accuracy for technical vocabulary coupled with simple grammar than everyday vocabulary coupled with tortured grammar.

    Consider the classic example of English abhorring ending clauses with a preposition: This is behavior up with which I will not put.

    English -> German -> English: This is behavior I will not deal with. Interesting that this drops either 'which' or 'that'.

    English -> Spanish -> English: This is behavior that I will not deal with.

    English -> Russian -> English: This is a behavior that I will not speak to. Note the appearance of the indefinite article 'a' which doesn't exist in Russian.

    English -> Arabic -> English: This is behavior I will not deal with.

    English -> Korean -> English: This is an action I won't cover.

    Interpretation: Google doesn't have many Korean speakers working on Google Translate. Fascinating that the German and Arabic routes produce the same exact result.

    Now for some technical writing (math/stats rather than medicine, what I have on hand): This family of distributions contains the multivariate normal, Student’s t, exponential power, and Pearson type II, but with an extra parameter to regulate skewness.

    English -> German -> English: This distribution family includes the multivariate normal, Student-t, exponential, and Pearson Type II distributions, but with an additional parameter to regulate skewness.

    English -> Spanish -> English: This family of distributions contains the multivariate normal, Student's t, exponential power and Pearson's type II, but with an additional parameter to regulate skewness.

    English -> Russian -> English: This family of distributions contains multivariate normal, Student's t, exponential, and Pearson type II, but with an additional parameter to adjust skewness.

    English -> Arabic -> English: This set of distributions contains multivariate normal variables, Student's t, Exponential power, and Pearson Type II, but with an additional parameter for regulating declination.

    English -> Korean -> English: This distribution group includes multivariate normal, Student's t, exponential power, and Pearson type II, but has additional parameters that control skewness.

    Interesting that German and Russian change 'exponential power' to 'exponential'. This may be convention in German and Russian math/stats because the exponential distribution is the exponential power distribution with shape parameter = 1. In a similar sense, the Pareto distribution is the Burr distribution with 2nd shape parameter 0. If it's the case that German and Russian mathematicians and statisticians make no distinction between what English speaking mathematicians and statisticians distinguish as exponential and exponential power distributions, that implies a lack of 1-to-1 correspondence of technical terms between English and German or Russian which could be a problem. However, that's common between English and continental European languages. Consider the English billion and the French or German Milliard[e].

    Also note that the Arabic route translates family to set, which in math/stats is OK, but the Korean route translates family as group, and group has special meaning in algebra, so should be avoided as a general synonym for family/set/collection in other branches of mathematics.

    Verdict: don't rely on Google Translate for translations between Asian and non-Asian languages.

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    Well I think that's a given. Asian languages are extremely complex when compared to english, but English compared to other derivatives like Spanish or Italian or Portuguese or French that would be a different story. But then again I think the derivative nature goes in reverse English was derived more or less from all the foreign languages so essentially yeah it goes Spanish, french, german, Italian, and then comes English a long time later.

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    Welcome to the forum, Lemon00!

    I notice that you have made a lot of posts this morning, but as yet have not offered any solutions to problems or asked a question. This does, I am afraid, raise suspicions about your reasons for being here, so please be aware that we shall be watching you closely.
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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    then why is his post count still at ZERO, Ali? he also said something here:

    https://www.excelforum.com/the-water...-outbreak.html

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    Re: How good is Google Translate?

    Because the sections to which he has posted all carry no post count - another reason why this is considered suspicious behaviour. Please don't clutter this thread with any more questions - if you wish further information on moderation decisions, please contact the mod directly.

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