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posted by mrpg on Friday February 02 2018, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the c'est-vrai dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

[...] When I first got interested in the subject, in the mid-1970s, I ran across a letter written in 1947 by the mathematician Warren Weaver, an early machine-translation advocate, to Norbert Wiener, a key figure in cybernetics, in which Weaver made this curious claim, today quite famous:

When I look at an article in Russian, I say, "This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode."

[...] The practical utility of Google Translate and similar technologies is undeniable, and probably it's a good thing overall, but there is still something deeply lacking in the approach, which is conveyed by a single word: understanding. Machine translation has never focused on understanding language. Instead, the field has always tried to "decode"—to get away without worrying about what understanding and meaning are. Could it in fact be that understanding isn't needed in order to translate well? Could an entity, human or machine, do high-quality translation without paying attention to what language is all about? To shed some light on this question, I turn now to the experiments I made.

It is a bit on the long side but Douglas Hofstadter very clearly exposes what language translation is and that Google Translate does not do it that way

Source: The Shallowness of Google Translate


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:25AM (15 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:25AM (#632293) Journal

    Even for an english speaker, reading english, "Your entire group will wipe out on that boss." is ambiguous at best.

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 03 2018, @02:04AM (8 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Saturday February 03 2018, @02:04AM (#632312)

    Really? Can you offer even a single credible alternative interpretation, because I'm honestly not seeing one.

    Also, an extremely large percentage of English, written or spoken, is at least moderately ambiguous from a strictly syntactic perspective. Most of it though is relatively unambiguous once you add in context, which is the author's point. I suspect most languages have similar problems, though I wouldn't be surprised if English were particularly bad about it.

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by frojack on Saturday February 03 2018, @03:02AM (5 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 03 2018, @03:02AM (#632328) Journal

      "Your entire group will wipe out on that boss."

      Your entire group will wipe out on that, Captain.
      Your entire group will slip and fall boss.
      Your entire group, will wipe out, big shot.

      In fact the only place this seems like it might make any sense at all is if you were playing a multi-player on line game, and were being warned about an end-of-level "boss".

      In a drug buy, the whole thing takes on a different meaning. If you can't think of one alternative, you aren't thinking straight.

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      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:00AM (3 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:00AM (#632367)

        Hmm, I can't get any of those meanings without adding punctuation to the original - basically, without ", boss" none of those interpretations are reasonable, (hmm, unless #2 is using "boss" as an intensifier I suppose...) And I think asking AI, or even humans, to to translate through punctuation errors that bad is entirely unreasonable.

        Basically, the only context where that statement actually makes sense as written is in the context of a multiplayer game (not necessarily online - tabletop RPGs are a thing) And thus recognizing that context is necessary to accurately translate what is otherwise a poorly organized word salad. Further context from the surrounding text would potentially help as well.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:18PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:18PM (#632509)

          #1. Punctuation only exists in written communication
          #2. Punctuation is frequently ignored in casual written communication
          #3. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling are subject to frequent mistakes, intentional, unintentional, or unknowing
          #4. Automated translation isn't useful if it requires linguistic perfection to successfully translate

          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:29PM (1 child)

            by Immerman (3985) on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:29PM (#632573)

            Translation software is, so far as I'm aware, only working on written communication. All voice-translation is done by first transcribing the speech, and then translating the resulting text.

            Punctuation can dramatically change the meaning of text - and even humans will generally read what's written, not what was intended. Asking any translator to magically translate the intent, rather than what was actually written, is ludicrous.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:14AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:14AM (#632767)

              There are a fair number of voice translations products nowadays.

              Those will eventually have to work on tone of voice and pauses. There are different ways of saying "Fine"

              Not sure how long it'll take for something like this to be produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVib_giTFo [youtube.com]

              ;)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:14PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:14PM (#632565)

        All of those other interpretations require willfully ignoring the text and making random substitutions that aren't going to make sense.

        Most likely that sentence would be from a gaming site and it's pretty fucking clear that the intention is to wipe out the boss as none of those other possibilities would make sense in that context and the sentence at large doesn't make sense in other contexts.

        This kind of thing is something I see from a lot of people trying to push proper grammar and spelling, it's always contrived and only rarely is it a valid observation, In this case, any native speaker that doesn't know what was meant from the context probably has some sort of learning disorder.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by toddestan on Saturday February 03 2018, @03:59AM (1 child)

      by toddestan (4982) on Saturday February 03 2018, @03:59AM (#632346)

      The problem with that phrase is it doesn't make sense. The phrase "wipe out" is of course slang, but in this context it really doesn't make sense, and neither are the choice of words around it, especially the word "on". In many ways, it looks like a bad translation, and I'm left wondering what the original phrase was. Does it mean:

      "Your entire group will be wiped out by that boss."
      "Your entire group will wipe out that boss."

      Also, does "boss" mean your boss at work, a boss in a video game, or since "wipe out" is also a racing term, a reference to a Boss [Ford] Mustang? It's not clear to me.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:33AM

        by Pino P (4721) on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:33AM (#632358) Journal

        "Wipe out" is a mediopassive verb [wikipedia.org], like "bake". In "He baked cookies", the subject is the agent, and the object is the patient. In "The cookies baked", the subject is the patient. Likewise with "wipe out": When used transitively ("he wiped somebody out"), it implies that the subject defeated the object. But when used intransitively ("he wiped out"), the analogy is to a surfer who completely loses control of his board, and the subject is defeated. The word "on" takes "that boss" out of the direct object position, forcing the intransitive interpretation.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:47PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:47PM (#632518)

    For a non-native speaker, is that even English?!?
    I would have been pretty convinced "wipe out on" in no way can be a gramatically correct form, not even in English...

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:36PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:36PM (#632577)

      It is. "Wipe out" is a slang verb meaning to crash, fall, or otherwise end badly. For example: "Did you see that skier wipe out when he landed off-balance?"

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:50PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:50PM (#632612) Journal

    Actually, to me it's not so much ambiguous, as without *any* clear meaning. There's the impression that something alarming is being communicated, and that lots of (people?) are involved. But beyond that it becomes an exercise in creative interpretation.

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    • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:08PM (2 children)

      by vux984 (5045) on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:08PM (#632667)

      Context always matters. There was enough in my post to make it crystal clear to anyone who played multiplayer online games for any length of time to recognize that as the context; and they would easily understand the slang/jargon. And it sees use in other contexts as well.

      To 'wipe' or 'wipe out' in an encounter is to have everyone in your team / group / adventuring party killed.

      e.g.
      "We were killing goblins in the huts when so-and-so popped in and wiped out the group."
      "We had the goblin king down to half health when he went berserk and wiped out the entire party in 5 seconds."
      "We were burning down the troll queen, when the ranger accidentally pulled the king, and we had to evacuate or it would have been a wipe.
      "I've seen groups of endgame level players wipe on that boss if they aren't paying attention, but he's easy as long you do A-B-C.

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:10AM (1 child)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:10AM (#632736) Journal

        To me "boss" suggested some sort of work environment, not a game. I didn't even consider that gaming was a possible scenario for the comment. I'll admit that my most recent multi-player gaming was D&D, and that prior to the domination of the field by TSR. But I *am* a native speaker of English. "Wipe-out" to me suggested either skiing or "wall of death" skateboarding, though I was aware that it wasn't limited to those areas...still, I presume that it's usage in other areas is derivative from those uses. (That was the "sense of menace" I saw, which was vague because there are lots of figurative uses of "wipe-out". E.g., the skate-board and skiing uses are themselves probably derivative figurative uses from the military use.)

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        • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday February 04 2018, @02:42AM

          by vux984 (5045) on Sunday February 04 2018, @02:42AM (#632755)

          As I said, it's slang/jargon from multiplayer gaming; although now the jargon and slang has migrated BACK to pen and paper; so it wouldn't be uncommon at all for people playing D&D to use terms such as pull, aggro, boss, evac, wipe, etc when describing a D&D encounter these days.

          " "Wipe-out" to me suggested either skiing or "wall of death" skateboarding, though I was aware that it wasn't limited to those areas...still, I presume that it's usage in other areas is derivative from those uses."

          Yeah, maybe. I'm honestly not sure. It could also be derivative of 'wiping the slate clean' with everybody dead and back at a respawn point and having to restart the encounter from scratch; or perhaps from 'wiped out' as an extinction level event "the meteor wiped out the dinosaurs" and in the same way the group was obliterated. To me that actually resonates a bit more strongly than simply a skate-board crash or car accident, but I couldn't say with any authority where it came from.