Ventures into online machine based translations haven't met with much success so far - at least not to a degree that can be called phenomenal. While smaller words / phrases / sentences translate fine, the translator engines perform rather pathetically when it comes to large chunks of text.
Translation engines have been around since the early 90's, when AltaVista came out with its famous Babelfish. In general, the online translators are pretty good and are able to convey the essence of the translated text. However, translator engines fair miserably while operating on non-Western languages specially languages which are based on pictograms / ideograms, like Chinese, Japanese etc.
Google seems to have finally realised that, following an incessant barrage of whines and grumbles about it's own translation service over the past few years. Google envisions that in near future ...
people will be able to translate documents instantly into the world's main languages, with machine logic, not expert linguists, leading the way.
In order to make this happen, Google plans to bring some drastic reforms to the algorithms working behind scene. As is expected of a technology pioneer, they've devised a new approach to the whole issue - namely, "statistical machine translation" which differs from any of the past efforts in that it forgoes language experts who program grammatical rules and dictionaries into computers."
The new process involves feeding pre-translated parallel text in various languages into computers and then relying on them to discern patterns for future translations. At the moment the quality offered by this mechanism isn't perfect either - but there's a distinct advantage to such a statistical analysis engine. With time, "the more data we feed into the system, the better it gets" said Franz Och, the head of Google's translation effort at its Mountain View, California headquarters. He further stated that "some people that are in machine translations for a long time and then see our Arabic-English output, then they say, that's amazing, that's a breakthrough."
I know chaos-labratory is yours m^e, but search engines like Google don't know that, and even if they did, couldn't make the link. One of the reasons for quoting things (other than not gaining credits for work that isn't yours) used to be that search engines penalized for exact text found in multiple places. If that isn't true or isn't an issue anymore than I apologize for adding the quote tags. Otherwise, I feel they belong.
Well this is indeed a very interesting article....
I can't wait to see this as it unfolds, hopefully they'll have something that people can see at work sometime in the future. I would assume that they have been working on it for some time now, or else they wouldn't have told people about it....
I know that from my experience, I have found that the online translation services are really terrible....in general they are basically the same as going into a dictionary that has both the languages, and then translating each individual word...which in many cases doesn't work, due to differences in grammatical flow of sentences, as well as multiple word definitions...
[also, just a side note: shouldn't this article have quote tags associated with it, seeing as most of the text is copied and pasted directly from the original article?]
Sounds like something done by a neural network. At least from overhearing all the people who were in the neural networks class at my college talk about their projects. It seems like it could be a good approach, but it will still likely have issues with words that can mean many things, and more importantly, slang and connotative only meanings. It could take a lot of data to get this up to a reasonably useful level. What I'm wondering is what if they try mixing the two styles. Using grammar rules and dictionaries on a first run through, use the statistical translation the second time, and then try and merge the two into one sensible document. The third part should be fairly easy relative to the second and first parts, especially when considering how well modern content management systems are at merging.
Also, Google's approach sounds (from the name they give to it) similar to the cryptograph solution method of finding the most common letters in the coded message and assuming they are the most common letter in the alphabet, working until it is easily guessed or a contradiction or unlikely situation occurs.
It will be interesting to see how this compares to grammar and dictionary based translations (good ones anyway) for grammatically precise well conjugated languages such as Hebrew and Latin. From languages like English to those languages it probably compares well, but I'm interested more in going from those languages to English.
If you think that Photoshop is too expensive to purchase, Microsoft Office Picture Manager is a bit
too bulky, and the GIMP a bit hard to use for editing photos, then I'm sure you'll find
Picnik to be a better application. If the above doesn't apply to you, give Picnik a try anyways
/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" /> URL:
http://picnik.com Picnik is an excellent tool for editing photos, especially if they are already
online. This is because Picnik can import photos from popular photo hosting sites, including ....
I found this site about a month ago, and I've found it very userful. Basically, its an open
source web application that allows you to convert a flash video (like the ones on YouTube) to MPEG4
online and download it. There is also a downloadable application that does the same thing. Its
in its beta stage, and can be pretty slow from time to time, but its definitely very useful. Also,
if you want to Rick Roll somebody on your iPod, this is how you're going to do it. Here is the
offical description from the website: ---------- " This service allows you c....
I'm not sure if this is the right forum but... I recent stumbled about this new site: Aviary .
Here is the description from their about page: QUOTE Aviary is a suite of rich internet
applications geared for artists of all genres. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to
video, we have a tool for everything. ... we are creating a complex ecosystem for artists and
providing the world with free, capable collaborative tools and an approach to collaboration and
rights management that will turn the marketplace for online art on its head. Right now, th....
After a LONG wait, Google finally has managed to round-up it's online office suite by adding in
a basic Presentation creator. However, contrary to all earlier speculations - they haven't named
it Presently . Rather this new app doesn't have any distinct name at all other than being
refered to as Google Presentation. Features Microsoft PowerPoint files less than 10 MB can be
imported and exports take the shape of HTML files with images. Themes and layouts of slides can be
modified - but there aren't too many available options. As it is with Google D....
this site Stage6 , you can see Videos, Films, Animate, Documentary with the best quality of
image, totally online, and in addition it allows that we unload what we want, that you only need to
have a very good speed.....
Newspaper bloopers can be real funny, but I haven't seen one of the likes of this in ages...
The Nation , one of leading English dailies of Thailand reported today that ... Google Sky
launches Bobby Johnson, technology correspondent. Apparently, The Nation was supposed to run
this syndicated story on the launch of Google Sky, written by Bobby Johnson. Seems like they were
mighty impressed with Johnson and decided to launch him instead /biggrin.gif"
style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> Here's a screenshot...
Inci....
Just when you thought that Google is running out of ideas for their products, something unexpected
was introduced - a new search engine! I am sure everyone is confused - why would Google make such a
move when they already have the most popular search engine in the world (Yahoo! fans, face the
truth)? The answer is actually quite simple - but this is just my opinion - innovation. Even though
it is so widely used, we must admin that Google's search engine is a bit old-fashioned.
Unfortunately, they can't just upgrade it all of a sudden, as I am sure it would annoy....
Im not too sure if this can be posted here, but its news to me! anyway, If you go to google maps and
search for directions from New York to Paris, you get a rather interesting route. Go to the link
below and look at step 23 of the route! New York, New York to Paris,France made me laugh! -jimmy....
I don't know if this News has already come up on this forum...
http://www.informationweek.com/management/...cleID=196701966 Having a search engine where "the
people" contribute, is definitely a good idea. No doubt Wikipedia has changed the way people access
information. Will this Wikiasari be able to change the way people search? ....
Guys... you HAVE to try this service and see for youself. It's simply terrific. I'll quote
my review on it from ChaosLab . QUOTE(Chaos Laboratory) How would you like to be able to
create new events in your Google Calendar , write new posts on your blog hosted on Blogger ,
Typepad or Wordpress or create reminders , to-do's and notes without ever firing up
your browser? That too all this through the familiar environment of you favourite Instant
Messenger, be it Yahoo! , GTalk or MSN ? Look no further cause Imified has bro....
Some of you like myself swear by google, since we cannot imagine living without google search.
However some of the discussions on net has made me thinking over an important issue. Will Google
control too much of our lives ? here are the links which discusses an important point on
google's future plans ... Google wants to be YOUR Internet. Google becomes domain name
seller A Google OS by 2010 Google's Sinister(?) Plans GoogleOS Scenarios Let me
add, google has already hired top brains for its (secret project), headed by Robert Pike. It coul....
Google's at it again and this time with a much-needed patent search engine. It sports the same
minimalistic interface that's a trademark of Google and allows you to perform fulltext searches
on a database of over 7 million patents and view the details of each patent along with all the
drawings / sketches. The scanned pages of the original patents are displayed in a PDF-like format
with the ability to zoom in/out Apparently it uses the same underlying technology as Google Book
Search. For those who've cracked their skulls over the notorious USPTO search....
Well, well, well. It looks like Yahoo and IBM want a piece out the Google search empire. The two
are reportly teaming up in a joint venture to offer a free data search tool that will be geared
towards businesses that offer better Yahoo search results. The search product should be a huuuge
success since IBM already sells a business focused search product called OmniFind that allows
businesses to search through internal documents. You couple this with the Yahoo search platform and
wallah! Better search results! Check out the link below to read the article. Its really ....
Google has just acquired YouTube.com website: The founders of YouTube posted a video (what else?)
where they talk about the acquisition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCVxQ_3Ejkg Check out the
grins on these guys!....
Hi all.. Check this out: www.writely.com Its a new service from Google for simple and secure
document colloboration and publishing product! I can call it as online Word Processor which is
rocking in its Beta time itself! /biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0"
alt="biggrin.gif" /> They wil aslo provide some mal address to which you can send documents
directly! You can upload or create new from the sitre itself! /cool.gif"
style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="B)" border="0" alt="cool.gif" /> - Each attached document
will be converted....
Google's feed reader has undergone a major facelift. Thank God that the developers realised
that the old scrollable interface just wasn't practical enough for users with lots of feeds.
Categorization has always been a requirement to handle feed overload. New features: * Expanded
view and list view (similar to Gmail, list view shows only the title and a small snippet, while the
expanded view shows the entire post) * Simplified sharing functionality (just click on the share
link, and add snippets from blog posts to a public page. You can share that page with yo....
A new feature of Google Image Search that allows you to label random images to help improve the
quality of Google's image search results. How does it work? You'll be randomly
paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your
partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to
describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some
points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can exp....
Recently I was intrigued by the discussion on Google web applications, and had looked into such
existing products or services. I came across two most interesting cases. 1) www.Goowy.com
(based on Macromedia Flex) 2) www.eyeOS.info (based on Ajax) It is better that you guys get a
first hand experience of both the webtops so that you can realize their pros and cons. A webtop
is a great concept, where you can have some handy tools on the internet and use them from anywhere
in the world. You can set your own personalized wallpaper, themes as they suite you. ....
Google had just published another new service, it is called google web accelerator, it's an
accelerator for your web surfing, so you can save time surfing the internet, it looks a very great
service when you look at it generally, but for the first time google made a very bad service, it
does nothing new than the old accelerators, to make it appears like a very good brand service they
put a warning that this service is only for broadband ADSL internet connections, not for dialup
internet connections, as they didn't test it for dialup, in fact i did, i tested it....
FINALLY! Finally Google released Google Earth for Linux. Now, we don't need to run it over WINE.
Google Earth uses QT and OpenGL as renderers, so you do need those driver and toolkit.
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html It is currently in beta as part of the 4th version.
xboxrulz....
One of the most popular Google programs, and maybe one of the most dangerous, Google Earth, is
getting a new version. What's more, this time it is released for all supported operating system
simultaneously. You can download it here . Besides various OS support, it is also multilingual
with French, German, Spanish and Italian now supported. Also, these countries are now more detailed
in Google Earth and advanced search is now available. Next, Google has increased the percentage of
the land covered with high resolution images. It is now 20%, whereas the other 80% ....
Rumours have been flying around for quite a while about a Google Music service which is to be
announced in about 6 months time. I tracked a bunch of articles on this and recent news indicates a
very high probability of this happening for real. Here are some exerpts from those articles... Read
the sources to find out more. QUOTE(SearchEngineWatch.Com) Elinor Mills has a brief post
reporting that Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck is predicting that Google will offer a digital music
download service in the three to six months. Bear Sterns is using the name the name "Go....
Google Labs seem to be churning out products incessantly.. Recently, a Google employee named Erika
Joy leaked out a couple of screenshots of their soon-to-be released product called Google Notebook
, due for launch sometime next week at: http://www.google.com/notebook It's supposed to be a
tool that blows the living daylights out of the likes of del.icio.us . It's going to be a tool
for gathering data from all around the web (bookmarks or actual content), nicely categorize them and
add related metadata and finally publish it if you want. Looks like it's....
Google's released 4 new search related products as mentioned in this article in InformationWeek.
QUOTE Google today introduced four new search products and promised to operate with more
transparency. Before a few dozen journalists from around the world gathered for Google Press Day
2006, company executives offered a broad overview of the search giant's future direction,
reiterated its focus on search, and spoke of plans to open up. Ironically, the wireless network that
Google had set up for guests was down at the time. "The Google story is getting more c....
Hi guys, I came across this site called Writely - which offers you an online browser-based
Word Processor , quite similar to what Microsoft is trying to offer in it's Windows Live. What
suddenly caught my notice was this one single line right below their site logo that says - QUOTE
The Web Word Processor ...that's now part of Google. Digging
further I came upon this article at Red Herring describing Google's buyout of this company
and the subsequent assimilation of their software into the Google system.. My guess is....
Just kidding, they do have money /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0"
alt="smile.gif" /> But someone could that they don't. Here's why. The incident happened in
Brazil. The Google owners were having some business meeting with the local Google group, but they
were also relaxing on the sandy beaches. But something went wrong when they went to a restaurant.
The restaurant was for rather rich people, since it was quite expensive. After finishing the dinner,
the Google owners wanted to pay, but their credit cars got rejected! /biggrin.gi....
I turned on the news this morning, and heard about the United States Government wants Google to turn
over it's search records. I'm sure you all know, but in case you've been living in a
cave for quite some time Google is an internet giant with a number of various internet services
offered, the service in question its massive web-search database that gets millions if not billions
of searches a day making it the largest AND most profitable search engine ever. The government went
to Google and asked them to give them their database records of all searches mad....
Try this link for a satellite view of the World Trade Center site, with map superimposed, for
example: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.036764,-...9&z=1&t=h&hl=en I tried to locate "high
knob, virginia" and bizarrely got a shot of coastal California. I tried again with "norton,
virginia" and was able to sidle over to High Knob. Another Google service I just learned about is
scholar.google.com. I ran a search on " java eclipse" and got about 3000 hits, "java beans", about
8000, "css style sheet" -- about 1800. The results come from scholarly and professional jour....
Notice from qwijibow:
Coppied and pasted from
http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html correcting hostiong credits.
QUOTE Google
Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google's global computer network to
make web pages load faster. It is easy to use; all you have to do is download and install it, and
from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before. Google Web Accelerator uses
various methods such those stated below to improve the loading time of web pages. •Sending your page
re....
