So, we know that machine / computer translation is not a new thing and regular followers of my rants, er, blogs, will know that I am on a one-woman crusade to explain to people how dangerous machine translation can be for businesses - as it often gets things wrong.
For example, only last week I put the word 'hello' into Google Translate, and asked for a Hindi translation. It produced नमस्ते for me. When this word is put into another online translator (another big world-wide company offering free machine translations), it translated it back into English as 'disturb'. Oh dear!
We do believe that Google translate, for example, is a good dictionary - just as you would open a dictionary and find, say, 13 meanings for one word, you can successfully use Google translate in this way - and if you know what to do with the results -it's great. But if you want it to provide conclusive, accurate results, it won't.
You may be thinking that of course I am against machine translation - Talking Heads is in the business of selling professional translations! However it makes us exactly the people who know (and manage) the perils of mis-translations every single day and it makes me cringe to think of our customers having poor (and potentially dangerous) machine translations on their websites, etc.
However, you, our customers, are an intelligent bunch. We know that you understand the perils of using a machine translation, rather than a professional human, so I haven’t been banging on about this for a while! But now, after the excitement of the first releases of translation gimmicks available as Apps dies down (iPhone and Android), where do we stand? We review the top 3 iPhone Apps for translation.
THE TESTS
Test 1 - translate 'My name is Laurianne' into French
Test 2 - translate 'We don't not want to do that' into Spanish
Test 3 - translate 'Is your client in receipt of benefits?' into Russian
Test 4 - record my voice and translate
THE RESULTS
Google Translate £££ = free
What does it do?
Translates in and out of 60 languages
Records you speaking and translates to other languages
Test 1 result - WRONG! Google provides a colloquial form of this, which a business user would not want to use.
Test 2 result - WRONG! It translated 'We don't not want to do that' to 'No, I do that'. This is because Google translate cannot cope with common English double negatives that we use a lot.
Test 3 result - WRONG! Google has no knowledge of cultural words and is unable to detect the fact that the word 'benefits' means a very specific thing in the UK public sector.
Test 4 result - WRONG! This app didn’t pick up what I was saying even though I was speaking very clearly. I even tried it in an American accent and it didn’t get it...
iTranslate £££ = free
What does it do?
It claims to be the first real universal translator. Similar functions to Google translate
Test 1 - WRONG
Test 2 - WRONG - it translated 'We don't not want to do that' as 'do not want to do that' which is almost the complete opposite of what I said!
Test 3 - WRONG - No cultural knowledge
Test 4 - you have to buy credits to be able to record your voice then translate it.
SpeakText FREE £££ = free
What does it do?
Translates sentences that you have touched/selected on your phone
Speaks and translates whole pages
Test 1 - WRONG. Also - you have to go through the settings menu to change the language which is very frustrating
Test 2 - WRONG - translated 'We don't not want to do that' as 'I do not want to do that'
Test 3 - WRONG
Test 4 - you can't record your own voice. However this app reads out web pages, which is good, in a rather annoying robotic voice, which is bad.
I'd love to say that after playing around with translation apps for 2 hours, I found some good uses for them - I’d love to find an app that can complement our language services. But I simply didn't - and my worry with these, as with all machine translations, is that if someone trusts the results, they will end up believing them and getting themselves into hot water!
If you've found a translation app that works - tell me about it.
Laurianne
laurianne@talkingheads.gb.com 0114 257 2077
TH news
Published on 22. January 2012 08:32 by Laurianne
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