(1) "What is the difference between Google Translate and Apertium? Google Translate build systems that work but they don't know why, whereas in Apertium we build systems that don't work but we know why." (a retake of the usual joke on Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics).
(2) I wonder if they are using any of Apertium or Matxin to do some morphological preprocessing... (3) >> Yep, especially considering that after talking with Mike Galvez (Google) >> and Ofis ar Brezhoneg, I have been sending them data for Breton. Mike >> has told me that any data I send them will be returned as TMX. >> >> It was a hard decision -- making ourselves less relevant one pair at a >> time -- but as many people have told me, getting on Google Translate is >> a real point of pride for speakers of smaller languages. And the >> language should always come first. >> Sorry, Fran, but isn't this the same as effectively collaborating with a company that does closed-source MT? You won't get the code to their system, and you won't have access to the enormous amount of corpora they have access to. So, wouldn't these language communities actually be "taking pride" in becoming dependent on Google? Wouldn't these language communities be effectively giving up on actually understanding how their languages work so that they can build technologies of their own for them? I 'm sure your collaboration with Google is well-meant, but I think we should be very careful about the way we facilitate Google's moves towards generating translation technology monopolies for small languages. (4) > It's apples and oranges; apples grow in more places and are easier to > get; when you squeeze your own orange juice and get a glass full of > pips, well, that sucks; but when what you want is orange juice, you > shuldn't really pay too much attention to apples, right? > Sorry, I don't understand. Mikel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Apertium-stuff mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff
