Google Translate's blog:
I mean, have the folks over at GT ever actually used their product? It's not very good. I'll admit that machine translation has improved a lot in recent years, but I doubt it's as good as a second-year Spanish student armed with a pocket dictionary.
Nothing against the fine engineers working at Google. GT is an achievement to be proud of, but when they go around claiming to have solved machine translation, it makes those of us still working on the problems of language look bad. It's hard enough to convince my parents that I'm doing something of value without Google claiming to have already solved all the problems.
There are some things we still can't translate. A baby babbling, for example. For the week of November 15th we are releasing five videos of things Google can’t translate (at least not yet)! Check out the videos and share them with your friends. If you can think of other things you wish Google translated (like your calculus homework or your pet hamster), tweet them with the tag #GoogleTranslate. We’ll be making a video of at least one of the suggestions and adding it to our page.What do I wish Google Translate could translate? I'll bite. How about Russian? Or Japanese?
I mean, have the folks over at GT ever actually used their product? It's not very good. I'll admit that machine translation has improved a lot in recent years, but I doubt it's as good as a second-year Spanish student armed with a pocket dictionary.
Nothing against the fine engineers working at Google. GT is an achievement to be proud of, but when they go around claiming to have solved machine translation, it makes those of us still working on the problems of language look bad. It's hard enough to convince my parents that I'm doing something of value without Google claiming to have already solved all the problems.
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