

Google improves its Translation Tool - anderzole
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/technology/09translate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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flipbrad
It's good, but I clicked through hoping it was actually announcing some new
feature/power - this really is nothing but a PR statement and a nice but oh-
so-cursory introduction to Franz Och.

I'm a little suspicious. I note that Google serves the ads on the site. And
now look at that author's list of recent articles - it's almost entirely
Google. And articles about the Buzz cockup, for example, start ("Google moved
quickly over the weekend to try to contain mounting criticism of Buzz") and
finish ("“I suspect Google might have a minor hit on its hands already,” he
said.") on quite positive notes.

I don't want to step up any allegations of dishonesty, it's more likely to be
lax or fanboyish journalism, but it's really quite poor stuff from that
journalist.

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trevelyan
I've admired Franz Och for quite some time now. Giza++ is an impressive piece
of software that has really put SMT on the map. Nice to see the man finally
get some press recognition.

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barrkel
For context: SMT here is statistical machine translation, not simultaneous
multi-threading.

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Groxx
Google is awesome. And frightening. And frighteningly awesome.

But I guess that's partly the status of anyone with _that_ kind of computing
power just lying around.

 _"While many translation systems like Google’s use up to a billion words of
text to create a model of a language, Google went much bigger: a few hundred
billion English words. “The models become better and better the more text you
process,” Mr. Och said."_

 _"Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation
tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cellphone photo of
a menu in German and get an instant English translation."_

Simply awesome. Add that to the Youtube transcribing they've been fiddling
with for a while now.

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martythemaniak
Not only massive computing power, but also some pretty smart and creative
folks too. I sometimes wonder where Google will be in 10 years.

~~~
groaner
Couldn't help but recall this pic I saw a while ago:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/thevoyagers/518750492/>

~~~
Groxx
Fark generates some fun stuff :)

And while it'd be a privacy nightmare, I'm sure nearly everyone would _love_ a
search that indexed their house. Think of it: never lose _anything_ , ever
again. I could use that pretty often, especially with roommates and cats :D
(guess which cause more lost items)

