Question What mistakes does google translate make when translating Chinese into English?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by fox23, Aug 7, 2019.

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  1. fox23

    fox23 Digging Pits

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    I have a programmer friend who is thinking about writing a program to help fix mistakes google translate makes when translating Chinese into English. (What can I say, he was inspired after hearing me complaining about it to him too many times haha.)

    So, what are some of specific issues you run into when using google translate? (Ex: Names are not translated into pinyin correctly, eye is translated into scorpion, etc.) It would be helpful if you also included the Chinese text/ term that has the issues.
     
  2. Deleted member 155674

    Deleted member 155674 Guest

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    Well, your friend is in for much work, even if he just takes care of only translating from the Chinese into English part (assuming he isn't planning to correct every language translation), good luck with the syntax and pronouns especially:blobunamused:
     
  3. fox23

    fox23 Digging Pits

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    Google translate is doing most of the translations. The program is just going to fix the errors that specifically pertain to reading webnovels. We aren't fixing syntax but making mtl more legible and less headache inducing.
     
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  4. Femme Fatale

    Femme Fatale | Sublime Goddess Of Chance |

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    Consistent pronouns for starters. He/her/it is sometimes indistinguishable for example.

    Consistent names.
     
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  5. Fundle

    Fundle Well-Known Member

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    the words for beauty and united states being mixed up She is such a United states! The United states was lounging on the chaise. She was from the beauty and has come back from being abroad.
     
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  6. Femme Fatale

    Femme Fatale | Sublime Goddess Of Chance |

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    And why is beijin in there as a city/capital? That confuses me too cause they are definitely in olden historical times. >_>
     
  7. UnGrave

    UnGrave ななひ~^^

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    I feel like your friend is going to give up very quickly. Rather than looking for common terms like that, it would probably be better to make something like an extension to remember user-inputted phrases and store them in a local dictionary so it's the same every time. There's also the option of connecting it to a server or something, but you'd be wasting your time asking the forum for these phrases before you even have the thing able to make those changes. Careful not to put the cart before the horse here.
     
  8. Fundle

    Fundle Well-Known Member

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    Names are the most worrying thing really, you can teach google translate to not translate certain names but lots of times Chinese authors have a ton of names and nicknames for characters. I remember reading one book and just looking for the word snow and knowing that meant the main character cause the author had given the main character a 4 word name, and changed up frequently how it was said.
     
  9. RizYun

    RizYun #Kaffee4Laifu

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    make sure that GT wont translate people's name into english. i.e: yue = moon, yun = cloud, lei = thunder, dongyang = east, etc
     
  10. SilvaLau

    SilvaLau Well-Known Member

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    Personally, I don't think it's quite possible to make machine translation perfect when there are translators out there who still misunderstand the context and translates wrongly.

    The syntax between the two languages are too different for one, and in Chinese, each character has its own unique meaning and if you combine two, three characters into one word, the meaning completely changes. Moreover, when you combine all those characters to form a sentence, you may need to read the sentence a few times to get the correct combination of characters that made up a word, as reading them in the wrong combination would give you different meaning and make the whole sentence confusing
     
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  11. Fundle

    Fundle Well-Known Member

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    genre is also something to consider. Modern day stories are easy to read in mlt then sci fi. Sci fi is easier to read the xianxia. Xianxia is impossible to read sometimes just because the terms are so foreign that google translate them to a word you have no idea what its is. Dishwasher is easier for google to understand the nascent soul.
     
  12. oblueknighto

    oblueknighto Blue Person

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    So you mean your friend wants to make something like LNMTL? The whole site was made for exactly that.
     
  13. Femme Fatale

    Femme Fatale | Sublime Goddess Of Chance |

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    Yes and no. Who thought Microsoft Word spell checkers would get so good? You have to seriously look into a problem, solve the bigger issues and then work your way through the nuances, before you make progress. \o/ That's where computers are so good cause they do lots of little stupid things fast.
     
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  14. fox23

    fox23 Digging Pits

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    Yes but also no. The premise is something like LNMTL of better translations, but the idea is for people to be able to input whatever text they want to read. That's what I don't like about LNMTL--it doesn't have the novels I am looking for 99% of the time, so I can only read whatever google translate gives me. This doesn't have to be good or perfect; it just needs to be better than what is already out there. (At the very least, I need to stop seeing "cockroach" and "scorpion" everywhere in the text.)
     
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  15. Darkcrow.

    Darkcrow. Foul Tarnished

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    It makes a perfectly normal novel to a yaoi novel.
    and mc can change his gender whenever he wants to
     
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  16. yserieh

    yserieh Well-Known Member

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    Slang and idioms can and will get lost in translation.
     
  17. yamibae

    yamibae Well-Known Member

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    I suppose the way you're trying to do it is the LNMTL method of glossaries. The way Google Translate works is that it doesn't play that well with glossaries. It's an OK result but the content becomes less and less legible the moment the glossary grows this is due to the way Google's translation engine works in that it doesn't take into account glossary words unlikes Systran which has built-in functionality to take it into account when translating. I've had mixed results in testing when I made a similar thing as a hobby project since I was interested in the same concept of how well Google Translate would perform given pre-translated words for locations/names/techniques

    Forgot to mention, one thing extremely annoying about Google Translate is it tends to cut out entire sections of text that it can't translate.

    Tong Yao was napping in her car when a sudden jolt hit her head. When she woke up, she knew something was wrong.

    When the bus into a red sedan chair, if this put the ancient palace, she is not a princess life?

    "What's going on? " Tong Yao screamed.

    "Young Lady, you have been frightened by the accidental slip of two ignorant minions just now, " a voice outside explained in a low voice.

    Miss? Minions?

    It's not an act, is it?

    In a foggy mood, she lifted the red veil gently over the bags and saw a lush green grass outside. The weather was fine, the sun was shining, and even the breeze was tinged with the faint scent of flowers.
     
  18. xiazixin

    xiazixin Well-Known Member

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    LOL, some one confused 美利加 as 美丽家?I guess that's possible if author have mistyped and Google translate kill it.

    As a active translator in Novelupdates community I say it's not needed to have machine translator. We have cat tools with translation memories, Glossary and fuzz string matchings

    There are tons of free cats like Wordfast anywhere, omagaT.
    There are also open source communities translation tools like Weblate and zanata.

    I have a file glossary with names logo and idiom and other names and phase. That is in both traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese. I'll share it here when I'm in desktop mode, when I get home.

    You can get fuzz strings match sample from open source tools like OmegaT, weblate or zanata.

    Note: Google translation is not free.
    So please stop your friend if he plan to pump money into it.
     
  19. SilvaLau

    SilvaLau Well-Known Member

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    Microsoft spell checkers? Uhm... I don't understand, doesn't the spell checker only check for spelling mistake? Does it correct your grammar among other things?

    P.S. I haven't used Microsoft Word for years now, especially not the latest version of the windows office.
     
  20. xiazixin

    xiazixin Well-Known Member

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    Last edited: Aug 7, 2019
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