 |
Earth's 7,000 Languages Soon Machine Translatable
Machine translation usually needs huge datasets to work its magic, preferably involving identical texts Rosetta Stone-style. New work from German academics breaks fresh ground.
The new technique is based around a single text that has been translated into at least 2,000 different languages. This is the Bible, and linguists have long recognized its importance in their discipline.
Consequently, they have created a database called the Parallel Bible Corpus, which consists of translations of the New Testament in 1,169 languages. This data set is not big enough for the kind of industrial machine learning that Google and others perform. So Asgari and Schutze have come up with another approach based on the way tenses appear in different languages.
Computational linguistics has had a profound impact on our understanding of language, the way it varies around the world and how machines can understand it. This emerging discipline has made it possible to automatically translate many languages directly into others in written and spoken form. Indeed, the promise is that instantaneous machine translation will soon match and then outperform the ability of human interpreters.
Star Trek fans recall the Universal Translator that can translate between ordinary english and an obscure, never-before-seen tongue - lizardese! In the 1967 episode Arena, Captain Kirk is whisked off to a distant planet to battle a creature never encountered before by humans - a Gorn. (Skip to 45 seconds into the trailer if not a Trek fan.)
Today, Ehsaneddin Asgari and Hinrich Schutze at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich in Germany say they have done just that. Their new approach reveals important elements of almost any language that can then be used as a stepping stone for machine translation.
(Star Trek Arena trailer)
Note that the translator works immediately. Compare to the more realistic (hah!) translator discs from Larry Niven's 1970 masterpiece Ringworld:
The tattooed one made a short speech. That was luck. The autopilot would need data before it could begin a translation...Presently the discs were filling in words and phrases...
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/14/2017)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" machine translation deep learning ")
Earth's 7,000 Languages Soon Machine Translatable
Bet this method would work with Gorns.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Current News
Foldable Galaxy Phones, I Swear They're Coming (Maybe)
How hard can it be?
Bacteria Behave Differently In Space
'The Republic struggled to control its Sours...'
Brain Connected To Internet - ‘Brainternet'
Fascinating!
Artificial Spider Silk
You can also use it to make a roof - on an asteroid.
MIT Tunes Ions For Frictionless Surface - Superlubricity!
'My telelubricator here neutralizes the interatomic bonds the surface of any solid...'
Seiko Astron Always Knows Your Time Zone
'Harrington glanced at his wrist watch - a bulky affair - and whistled.'
Robot Buddhist Priest Chants, Drums
'He crossed the waiting room to the Padre booth...'
Koniku Kore, Mouse Brain-Based Chip, Detects Explosives
'As a matter of fact, this mouse is going to keep on thinking forever.'
CNH Industrial Autonomous Tractor Concept Video
'...the tiny red glints of self-guided tractors.'
The Neuroon Open Sleep Tracker For Lucid Dreaming
'Leads trail away from insertion points on her face and wrist... to a lucid dreamer on the bedside shelf.'
Siri Now Smoother, Perkier (Thanks, Deep Learning!)
'Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal.'
China's Drone Fleet Flies In Formation
'Programmed to hang... in a hexagonal grid pattern.'
Neuralink, The Latest Elon Musk Passion
'I used my implant to tell MILLIE [a mainframe computer] what we wanted...'
RFly Drones Rule The Warehouse
'The wasp homed unerringly on the face of the honeycomb...'
Will The FDA Approve This Antiaging Drug?
'So what we're looking for now is... an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug.'
Rule Of Humans By Software Not Transparent
'The Council itself could be overridden by a superior power...'
