Google Translates Patents
December 23, 2010
The language barrier proves to be an unworthy opponent to Google and its awesome translation interface. The blog Web Translations details how “Google to Machine Translate Patents.” Google and the European Patent Office (EPO) have agreed that Google will be able to machine translate over 1.5 million patents into the twenty-nine languages to benefit the entire world.
“Officials involved in the recent agreement have stated that they hope this development will be welcomed by countries who feel they may have been put at a disadvantage, due to the language they speak.”
TMCNet points to another success for Google Translate: “Sakhr Launches Language Buddy App for iPhone in Four New Languages.” Sakhr Software released its Language Buddy iPhone app powered by Google Translate. Language Buddy understands text and speech from English, German, Spanish, Italian, and French.
“The four newly-enabled languages follow the successful 2009 launch of the company’s Arabic Language Buddy app. Sakhr has said that it launched Languages Buddy for non-Arabic languages to demonstrate “the integration possibilities between its mobile technology platform and other enabling language technologies that are provided through third parties.”
While Google Translate solves the language barrier, many are concerned about the accuracy of machine translation. While machines are capable of many things, machine translation has its limitations. Humans will still be needed to fix the errors machines make, especially in translation.
Whitney Grace, December 23, 2010
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3 Responses to “Google Translates Patents”
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I suspect the result may resemble the baloney examples in Stephen Arnold’s feature “Enterprise Search: Baloney Six Ways, like Herring”
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2010/12/21/enterprise-search-baloney-six-ways-like-herring/#more-15252
How can patterns of statistical sameness of previous human translations – even if using human translations of previous patents – bring forth uniqueness or patentability in machine translations of new patents (let alone anything else)? How will the intended or hidden particularity of a given term get more than a generic treatment? Or as Stephen Arnold put it “what happens is that the synthetic nature of English makes it easy to use familiar sounding words in a way to perform an end run around the casual listener’s mental filters.” I don’t think Google “solves” the language barrier. Let’s be fair and say it does seem that way sometimes, synthetically.
Interesting in the wake of these other, recent developments about European patents and the choice of languages in which they are filed
http://www.euractiv.com/en/innovation/italy-isolated-ten-countries-unite-patents-news-500416
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