Is Microsoft Translator a real threat to Google Translate?
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| | | Translation quality... | Jan 20, 2016 |
...doesn't appear to be an issue here, just the functional aspects, which is fairly staggering. But I can't decide whether it's encouraging - suggesting the average Joe has so little linguistic awareness that there's still a great need for specialists - or discouraging: after all, who cares as long as you can use it offline in a busy café?
| | | | esperantisto 
Local time: 05:03
Member (2006)
English to Russian
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SITE LOCALIZER | Threat? What threat? | Jan 20, 2016 |
Microsoft has proven to be absolutely helpless in competitive markets or in any markets where this company cannot abuse its monopolistic position and cannot bully customers into something. Its Surface tablets or Lumia smartphones are failures (thank Google for Android!). Previously, Microsoft failed to conquer the DTP software market. Microsoft Translator is doomed to be a failure too.
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Victoria Britten wrote:
- suggesting the average Joe has so little linguistic awareness that there's still a great need for specialists - or discouraging: after all, who cares as long as you can use it offline in a busy café?
No matter who or what does the translation work, the output is almost always used by humans. And if humans spot obvious mistakes in a text, they are not happy (i.e. stop reading, stop buying, etc.).
So long translated texts are used by humans, the translation work will be predominantly done by humans. If machines match humans, the former will take over, no doubt about that. It's not very different from the concept of international law, which translated into more basic language means "if I (a state) can beat you up, I will beat you up". If machines can beat us up, they will beat us up.
Now, not in out lifetime. Bear in mind we are still using the same mobile phones as in early 80s (ok, with some add-ons; internet, basically). There is no mission planned to reach mars with a human crew. The Moon is not yet colonised.
Therefore, it makes no difference whether Google Translate or anything else. Not for now.
| | | | Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:03
Serbian to English
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| "Is Microsoft Translator a real threat to Google Translate?" | Jan 20, 2016 |
The question is irrelevant!
Microsoft is only good at marketing and trying to carve for itself a monopoly - anything MS that works decently was created by someone else and then taken over by Microsoft.
Google Translate is marginally better, but the difference is irrelevant - at the current stage of development Machine Translation is a very real threat, not to translators, but to the language itself - as those who have to further translate or to "edit" MT crap wi... See more The question is irrelevant!
Microsoft is only good at marketing and trying to carve for itself a monopoly - anything MS that works decently was created by someone else and then taken over by Microsoft.
Google Translate is marginally better, but the difference is irrelevant - at the current stage of development Machine Translation is a very real threat, not to translators, but to the language itself - as those who have to further translate or to "edit" MT crap will know all too well. The available corpus of texts gets more and more polluted by MT crap - that's the real threat NOW! ▲ Collapse
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 04:03
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| A bigger threat | Jan 20, 2016 |
A bigger threat is web designers who thinks that you can design for tablets and then the site will work fine on a desktop computer.
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@ Samuel: that page looks fine in Firefox, maybe it's your browser?
On topic: In my combination I see very little difference between the output of the two engines (in terms of MT autocomplete suggestions). It seems they mine pretty much exactly the same resources.
Olly
| | | | | Both are real threats to human translators. | Jan 21, 2016 |
I do not concern whether Microsoft Translator is a real threat to Google Translate, because both are real threats to human translators, including me.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 04:03
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Off-topic, it's not the browser | Jan 21, 2016 |
Olly Pekelharing wrote:
@ Samuel: that page looks fine in Firefox, maybe it's your browser?
[Edited at 2016-01-21 15:24 GMT]
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| Does not really matter | Jan 23, 2016 |
According to me Translation requires that you research as you translate. Even the simplest of texts requires research . As a translator I feel people would read your translation if it were the original, while keeping the ideas and facts from the original source accurate. Even though machines and computers may partially help in translation these days, they can never produce a logically accurate human translation. Therefore I feel even if Microsoft Translator is a threat to... See more According to me Translation requires that you research as you translate. Even the simplest of texts requires research . As a translator I feel people would read your translation if it were the original, while keeping the ideas and facts from the original source accurate. Even though machines and computers may partially help in translation these days, they can never produce a logically accurate human translation. Therefore I feel even if Microsoft Translator is a threat to Google Translator, it does not really matter, because ultimately a human is required to produce a logically meaningful & acceptable translation. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:03
Serbian to English
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| logically meaningful & acceptable translation? | Jan 24, 2016 |
is that supposed to be a requirement?
Prajakta Rajendra Hagwane wrote:
According to me Translation requires that you research as you translate. Even the simplest of texts requires research . ... to produce a logically meaningful & acceptable translation.
Sounds so blindingly obvious, yet seems to be forgotten a bit too often by language experts and "experts" ...
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