I feel the following. 1) The translations Arabic – English are indeed extremely unsatisfactory. 2) You should be extremely careful about imputing political motivations to Google. I have looked up “Cast Lead” as a test for political bias. I cannot find any. 3) The statistical model used by Google is fundamentally flawed.
The explanation for this particular translation is really quite simple. Google Translate is being hacked. I can tell you how it might plausibly be done. What you do is take a phrase and put your translation into “Suggest better Translation”. You then set up an automated procedure so that thousands, if not millions of “better” translations are put in. If you are going to rely on “suggesting a better translation” one should at least check that the “better translation” is in fact a plausible translation within the confines of grammar. Google does not do this. You should be directing your moral anger at Mossad not Google. Mind Google have given Mossad an open door. You might be interested to know that the Israelis too are complaining about the same thing. The AIDS entry does not stem from hacking but arises out of the absence of vowels in Hebrew. In AIDS (in English) there are 2 vowels. Again they cannot complain morally. http://groups.google.co.uk/group/google-translate-general/browse_frm/thread/ec942a94f5551a05?hl=en http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general/browse_thread/thread/873d7b1ea9366b7f AIDS I feel like commenting on both these contributions along the lines of “Well who started it”. I feel I should point out as well the Google is scrupulously neutral on political questions. I got the following on “Cast Lead”. http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK247&q=cast+lead&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= This one does show the destruction. http://vimeo.com/7583268 Point is all this was easy to find, it was not hidden in any way. I am thinking largely as someone who has studied languages while at school. I learnt French, German and Latin. In every case we had a grammar of the language and a dictionary. I have a book on Modern Standard Arabic where exactly the same approach is used. However the main point is that statistical translation as typified by Google Translate is fundamentally unsound. The basic principle is to take human translations and do a matching of words and n-grams. http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/J/J93/J93-2003.pdf This can produce some good results. It can also produce some poor results. As we have seen it is prone to being hacked. http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general/browse_thread/thread/e353d10dc1d1a399 Latin http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.ai.nat-lang/browse_frm/thread/f0a1166597ca500e?hl=en MOLTO I feel that Arabs should really be concentrating on MOLTO and the EU. There are a variety of issues. MOLTO is a grammatical system which produces parse trees. You might get something a little bit stilted from MOLTO, but never anything that is factually or politically incorrect. MOLTO is multilingual and is capable of translating into a common base. MOLTO is also capable of generating Ontologies (OWL). Politically the EU has created a kind of Mediterranean Union (MINA). Arabic is not an EU language as such, but it is an important MINA language (French, German, English, Arabic are the MINA languages). I think you should be campaigning, as MINA members for Arabic to be included within MOLTO. What you need is 2 things. 1) Duals in the MINA grammatical base. None of the languages they have up to now has a dual. Should not be too difficult. 2) An Arabic personality module. This should not be as difficult to write as a full translator. There is one other point of a semi political nature. Google has expressed a strong interest in MOLTO. It might well constitute the basis in future. I have BTW written some software of my own based on Buckwalter’s dictionary. It could form a basis of a personality modue. - Ian Parker On May 27, 7:40 am, ash613 wrote: > Dear Sir > > I am one of the millions who talk with the arabic language, We have > suffered a great deal of abuse from Google. When Google translate the > words"ÃäÇ ÚÑÈí ÃÍÏ ÕäÇÚ ÇáÍÖÇÑÉ" It is translated into "I am an Arab- > be Israeli peacemaker civilization" which is totally different from > the original meaning. > This translation injure the feelings of many Arabs and Muslims around > the world, this is one of the attempts to obliterate the Arab > civilization and elimination, but strange that a company as Google is > this shameful act. This work that the truth of which he deliberately > hurt their interests in the world and will be boycotted all > contributions to Arabs and Muslims, if not officially. Whatever the > benefits that derive them, it did not amount to any scratched or > wounded in dignity -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
