revise paper
Lee 5
Name: Andrew Jun Derh Lee
Course: Linguistics 101
Date: 10/4/2018
The Shallowness of Google Translate
Google Translator is one of the multilingual machine translators that has helped to revolutionize the world. The translator supports more than 100 languages globally. Launched in 2006, it has been used to translate from one language to the other. However, many people have criticized its accuracy and the way it operates. There are some issues noticed in the way it has been used to translate languages. Forgetting the errors found in it, Google translator has helped many people especially students. We have been able to translate a text that you think its crucial but from another language. For this paper, we will see some of the examples of the failures from Google translate and see what it can be done to evade this.
Google translator is seen to be failing quite often. The way Google translate is used is good, but there are some of the lacking approaches that may be conveyed through a single word. The way the machine has been used is used for understanding the language rather than translating what it has received. The way Google translates is used is not the same as human beings. Human beings have “rivalry, jealousy, pride and many other intangibles that may lead to quirks of married people being embroidered "his" or "hers””. However, this is not the same for Google as it is not familiar with the situations but familiar with the composition of words. With it, it does not understand the stand of things.
One good example of this is, Google translates French and other romance languages is very different. The way it is translated does not reflect on words “his” and” her” on the way it is possessed. For example, translating “In their house, everything comes in pairs. There’s his car and her car, his towels and her towels, and his library and hers.” To French it becomes “Dans Leur Maison, tout vient en paires. Il y a sa voiture et sa voiture, ses serviettes et ses serviettes, sa bibliothèque et les siennes.” One ought to note “a sa voiture et sa voiture” and “his car and her car." The terms he and she have been replaced with one word “sa." This means that French does not recognize gender. Additionally, you will note that on the plural of the his and her. From the translation of “his towels and her towels” Google alter translated them to “ses” indicating that there is the plural of the terms “his” and “her”. This shows how Google has missed the whole issue of translation in making plural for his and her and being genderless.
Google does not behave in any way like a human being. Another example translated by Douglas Hofstadter will also give you the same explanation. He translated the version of the translated version from English to French and got this: “Chez eux, ils ont tout en double. Il y a sa voiture à elle et sa voiture à lui, ses serviettes à elle et ses serviettes à lui, sa bibliothèque à elle et sa bibliothèque à lui.”
From Douglas (2018), the translation Her car was translated to “sa voiture à elle” and his car to “sa voiture à lui." This is the necessary version as any human being would translate. However, he went ahead and challenged Google if it could translate the same in the required manner. However, as you can try and translate it becomes “At home, they have everything in double. There are his own car and his own car, his own towels and his own towels, his own library and his own library “One will notice a change in the whole structure of translation by google. It ignored the owners of gender and changed the sentence structure to a masculine one.
This is proof of what had been explained earlier. Google is not aware of things that human being has such as pride, jealousy, privacy and many other intangibles that are embroidered to having towels. Google is not like a human being who is capable of comprehending idiomatic expressions and other phrasal verbs. Without them, the real meaning of a sentence will be lost as seen from the above examples. Google translator is the best idea that ever came into their mind. It can be used to translate but occasionally take account the idiom and some of the common phrases used.
This applies in every language as Google does not translate the way a human being does. For instance, in Chinese, it may be even worse. As provided in the article by Douglas, (2018) Russian is also affected by coding strange languages in it. An expression such as Chinese has been found to be hilarious when translated. However, in recent year Google has tried to make sure that Google translate is becoming more and more accurate.
No, as of now it is 60% accurate a translation tool used as a phrase-based machine. This means Google is working harder to ensure it becomes one hundred percent accurate and with the progress they are making Google will be considered to have made a significant achievement in the translation industry. All efforts that are caused by Google are not doomed to fail but to improve the services of the company. Currently, according to Catherine (2016), Google is working on a project to ensure the advancement of the service. They are working with a brain like artificial intelligence software that would reduce the translation errors by 87%. The system will be using a massive amount of data increases the procession power to build accurate translations. The machine is a neutral machine translation that will be sued in making prediction making sure everything is effective. It will be fed by processors that have first trained human on actual translation. The processors will pick up the cues of data which they then further translate them. This means the translations not doomed to fail but even to improve further on translation.
Despite the ups and downs of the Google translator, one will appreciate the effort made by Google in coming up with the software and giving it out for free to the public to use. The software has been found to be having some errors, but the company is working hard to ensure they overcome the challenge. The challenge will be overcome as they have always surpassed any problem that comes their way. Google translator after achieving its 100 percent error-free software it will be one of the most used software as it will assist communication around the world to be improved.
Work cited
Catherine Matanic, " Google's New translation software is powered by Brain like artificial intelligence," 2016. Web. Available online from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/google-s-new-translation-software-powered-brainlike-artificial-intelligence
Douglas, Hofstadter, "The Shallowness of Google Translate," 2018. Web. Available online https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/