Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products.
Google expands mission to make automated translations suck less
Neural Machine Translation is now used to decipher English, German and Japanese and a few others.
What started with Mandarin Chinese is expanding to English; French; German; Japanese; Korean; Portuguese and Turkish, as Google has increased the languages its Neural Machine Translation (NMT) handle. "These represent the native languages of around one-third of the world's population, covering more than 35 percent of all Google Translate queries," according to The Keyword blog. The promise here is that because NMT uses the context of the entire sentence, rather than translating individual words on their own, the results will be more accurate, especially as time goes on, thanks to machine learning. For a comparison of the two methods, check out the GIF embedded below.
Google says that the ultimate goal is to have all 103 languages in Translate using machine learning. In the immediate future, though, it's opening up the NMT tech to businesses so they can use it how they see fit. If that increase in users means better translations, then, hey, everyone wins.
