
New Google Translate languages - anjalik
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/06/googles-smarter-a-i-powered-translation-system-expands-to-more-languages/
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Grue3
The neural network translation is so fickle, it can fail to accurately
translate a three digit number. It gets worse with larger numbers, with errors
by orders of magnitude.

[https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/six%20hundred%20sixty-
si...](https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/six%20hundred%20sixty-six)

[https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/eleven%20thousand%20one%...](https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/eleven%20thousand%20one%20hundred%20eleven)

Interestingly I wasn't able to reproduce it with English/Russian translation,
maybe they hardcoded it somehow, or maybe neural network for Russian hasn't
rolled out yet.

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kahnpro
I've been using it for English/Russian for the past couple years, haven't
noticed any change... it's still pretty awful and makes the same mistakes.

~~~
xbmcuser
They are supposed to transfer to neural translations today might not have
transfered over yet. I used to follow a Russian forums because the developer
of the software I used was on them. Would be interesting to see if there are
any changes to the translations.

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saagarjha
This title is misleading. The languages Google "added" have already existed;
what Google has done is run translation sentence-by-sentence instead of by
phrase-by-phrase.

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amelius
Is the algorithm (including e.g. network topology) published somewhere?

Alternatively, is there some open/published work with comparable performance?

~~~
Macuyiko
Well, yeah:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08144](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08144)

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dazc
"In addition, the Neural Machine Translation system learns over time and
improves, resulting in better and more natural translations the longer it
works."

Dumb question (maybe?). How is it learning since it's not getting any feedback
on what is the right and wrong answer?

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iokanuon
It is getting feedback, you can correct its results.

~~~
dazc
But who does that on any scale?

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jumasheff
Occasionally, I submit my translations/validations via Community page:
[https://translate.google.com/community#en/ky](https://translate.google.com/community#en/ky)

~~~
lucb1e
I would, if they'd not store my contributions locked away and assume
ownership. Same with Google Maps, they have a contribution feature which I'd
use if you could download Google's map under a similar license to
OpenStreetMap.

For Gmail and stuff I get it, but translate and maps are data projects, not
software projects, which take hard work by thousands of people to build. It's
extremely hard to build a competitor, and so I refuse to contribute to the
existing de facto monopoly.

~~~
jumasheff
I am really hopeful, that some day they will give a link to download your
contributed translations. But anyway, this service is one of the ways to help
your language to prosper.

~~~
lucb1e
> give a link to download your contributed translations

Well, that wouldn't really help anyone. They would need to publish all
translation data to help anyone make a competitor, which is not in Google's
interest.

