Comments on: Google's translation center: Language lessons for the Googlebot?

The search giant appears ready to launch a service to help people get documents translated. Might the service also help train Google's machine translation technology?

[mkimura1971]

There's a typo on the 4th paragraph: "But it it's possible..." should be "But is it's possible..."?

[mkimura1971]

Ha! There's a typo on my last comment! Sorry!

[mkimura1971]

Sorry there's a typo in my first comment too!!

[mkimura1971]

Ha!

[kareldriesen]

Google scored *first* place in NIST.
Google is only fifth in an *alphabetical list of participants*.
Look at the actual scores lower on the page http://www.nist.gov/speech/tests/mt/2005/doc/mt05eval_official_results_release_20050801_v3.html
and you see that Google had the *highest* score in all four tracks (2 for Arabic to English and 2 for Chinese to English).

[jrodadlv2007]

I hope that actually using real people to translate would be more successful that what's available now. All that I know is that when you hit "translate this page," be ready for a horrible sounding translation that doesn't sound good in English. The question is how good the translators are.

[nisteval]

The latest 2008 NIST results can be found here: http://www.nist.gov/speech/tests/mt/2008/doc/mt08_official_results_v0.html. It should be noted that while Google remained number 1 in Arabic to English, Chinese to English and English to Chinese, the spread in BLEU scores is much smaller now. A difference in 1-2 BLEU points is typically not perceivable to a reader. It all depends if the subject matter used to train the MT system matches the subject matter (or domain) of the document or text being translated.

What's more interesting is why Google is even bothering to launch this site. I suspect it's because the company is finding it difficult to collect parallel data to improve their machine translation systems (which are statistical based). Use their Translation Center... upload your data.. have the translators translate the documents.. upload it to the center.. and presto... Google acquires even more data for their own purposes. Just my 2 cents

[nistcorrect]

Google lost the number 1 in Chinese to English category in the 2008 results. They lost it to Microsoft Research (collaborating with others), a team which had not participated in 2005 or in the other 2008 categories.

[zextron]

Looks like in Europe the URL http://translate.google.com/center/learn-more.html just redirects users to their national google page :(

[benjaminstraight]

Cool.

[yuri34]

I don't think that Google will be able to keep itself outside customer service in this service. If I'm not happy with the translation or the translator ? Decent translators will not work for free. I prefer services like http://www.onehourtranslation.com or proz.com

[mdrick]

I kind of agree with the offer of this article that google will gradually put many translators and translation services vendors out of business.
http://www.polilingua.com

[Anyword_Guillaume]

Up until now, there has been, on one hand the unsatisfactory but free automatic translation programs, and on the other hand the option to pay for a professional translation service either provided by independent translators or by a translation company. It is already possible, for the more inquisitive buyer, to recruit on line their own human translator but generally speaking companies have more of a tendency to confide their projects to a translation agency.

Translation businesses bring access to professional translators in every language and in several fields of expertise. They analyse and prepare the work prior to translation, control turnaround times, serve as a point of contact both to the clients and the translators, sometimes acting as the voice of the customer to the translator and sometimes that of the translator to the client. They assure correct delivery of the final project to the client and also handle payment issues controlling client creditworthiness and assuring timely payment for themselves as well as the translator. At least this is the way we work at Anyword and how most of our competitors currently operate.

In this context is Google Translation Centre a threat to translation agencies? It is possible (and even probable) that initially a number of clients seeking to make savings will contact the translators directly. Over time these clients will either settle for the minimal solution and remain loyal to Google Translation Centre or they will wish to benefit from a veritable intermediary service and return to the agencies. I do hope so.

It is however necessary to clarify an important point: the service launched by Google is not a novelty. There are already existing human translation on line recruitment systems which are extensively used the translation companies. What is new is that Google authorise the ?volunteers? to register themselves as translators on their service. By ?volunteer? one must understand ?voluntary? and therefore in most cases ?inexperienced?. This means that the customers utilising this service are running an important risk that Google refuse to endorse in their general conditions of use.
This is what makes me think that businesses, always reluctant to take unnecessary risks, will not adopt Google Translation Centre. This debate is, of course open on the Translators Observers blog run by Anyword (http://blog.anyword.fr).

[Eurominuteman]

Google Translation Center is a mechanical model. It doesn't perform collaboration.
Collaborative Translation remains to be organical:

http://collaborative-translation.ning.com/group/googletranslationcenter

[janice_a]

I be in awe if Google?s determination to truly be concerned or provide any concentration at all to customer service or to excellence of the translation. There?s more translation services similar to this which focus on translators such as <a href="http://www.tomedes.com/"> http://www.tomedes.com</a>

[janice_a]

I be in awe if Google?s determination to truly be concerned or provide any concentration at all to customer service or to excellence of the translation. There?s more translation services similar to this which focus on translators such as http://www.tomedes.com

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[008victory]

[url=http://google.com]google[/url]

[buzzeit]

There are still problems with some translated phrases, because google is tryin' to be natural.
[url=http://www.cnet.com/]Cnet.com[/url]

[buzzeit]

There are still problems with some translated phrases, http://www.cnet.com/ because google is tryin' to be natural.

[ofer97]

While it is not clear If or When Google is going to come out with this service

One Hour Translation (http://www.OneHourTranslation.com) is already providing fast, high-quality, 24/7 human translation service,
based on a community of over 8000 translators from around the world...