On Jan 28, 4:27 am, Smelliness wrote: > (Hopefully) To a member of the google translate team, > I won't lie, I have no idea if you guys read this, and if you don't > then I would like apologize to all those members of the Google > translate group for misusing this group. > > I would like to say before I start on this whole suggesting thing that > I have found google translate immensely helpful in my study of > Mandarin, and I am more than certain that it will continue to be such > for many years to come - the application, both on the web, and on iOS > devices, is incredibly fast, functional, and (generally) correct > within a reasonable margin of error/mistranslation. > > However, I feel as if there could be a small change made that would > make using this service even better; a clearer indication of exactly > what the translated word means in the translated language. > > I know that you already do something similar to this, as you show > alternate words that could be used instead of the one suggested, but > these words are writen in the langauge that the user is already > translating into. So if an English word has a double meaning, and the > translated word is not the one that the user intends, they are > possibly unaware of this mistranslation. > If Google Translate offered either a definition, or a list of > alternate words, of the translated word in the langauge that the user > starts with (for example, English, should the user be translating an > English word into French), then mistranslations like these could be > dealt with. >
I am not sure if Google employees read this forum either, because I see so much spam in the group. I regularly report spam so that their online learning or training data might improve. I wish that they would understand that this is one of the products that they have been successful with that other parties are not offering. Hopefully they will be able to monetize it better if they are not receiving funds from the government. Google has used statistical methods to do translation. Peter Norvig has discussed this in some of his interviews and his online AI class. So, maybe almost all of the people are spending their time on the statistical models and making things scale. You could use an android dictionary application such as "Hanping Pro", or the IOS application "KTdict+ C-E", but it is not as fast as using well designed web applications. I noticed that sometimes the spanish translation makes mistakes, so I would definitely expect that there would be problems with mandarin. Do you ever see classifier errors? The tranlations definitely have problems with communicating time. You need to write the english sentences in a chinglish form that will trick the translator into translating it correctly. > I apologize for any confusion that arises from this rather unclear > message (I am on holiday and have therefore not had to have writen > anything in an embarrassingly long time, not a very good environment > for my already wilting skills of communication) but I hope you are > able to glean from it the gist of my suggestion. > > Once again, thank you all for the wonderful work you have already done > on Google Translate, and I hope that this message will go a tiny way > toward making it better (as I am sure you all have far better plans > that I do as to how to make this service better) > > Many thanks, > Smelliness -- 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.
