Google aims to

In the eyes of Google about the future, users will be able to translate all documents into English in the blink of an eye, and of course, no corny, word-by-word like today.

Named "Statistical Machine Translation", this technology differs from previous efforts in that it completely eliminates the role of language experts, legal rules and learning dictionaries.

Based on frequency

Instead, it synthesizes all the documents that humankind has translated into at least two languages, then builds a huge database to separate, contrast and translate.

Maybe the quality was not perfect at first, but nonetheless, "Statistical Machine Translation" is still an improvement compared to previous machine translation technologies, said Franz Och, 35, Project Manager. . To demonstrate, Och showed an AP reporter an Arabic-language news site translated into "fairly digestible" English.

Two other Google employees at the table said they were Russian, and the translation from English to Russian of another news site was quite easy to understand, although there were a few "strange" places.

Fluent in German, English and Italian, Och diligently entered hundreds of millions of words in Arabic and English texts into the computer. The main sources are from EU and UN documents. "The more data you enter into the system, the more accurate the results are obtained," Och said.

His program uses statistical analysis techniques - an approach that Och hopes will avoid diplomatic errors that have happened in the past, such as the Russian President Vladimir Putin's translation that has offended. German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder called him "Fuehrer", a name that any German would immediately assign to Hitler.

Difficult to replace people

" The computer will list how many cases of documents people use from Fuehrer Gerhard Schroeder. If the frequency of using the name Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schroeder is 100 times higher, the machine will choose the following option ," Och explained.

Currently, Google is providing statistical machine translation tools for Arabic, Chinese and Russian languages ​​to / from English at http://www.google.com/language_tools. Analysts praised Google's efforts, but did not forget to emphasize that the technology is still limited.

" Software cannot replace people in professional translation, as well as when playing chess. Software can be used to read a document, but cannot juggle with words to polish. It is possible, "said a professor of linguistics at Berlin.

Trong Cam