Statistical Translation: Dead Like Marley
June 16, 2016
I read “Facebook Says Statistical Machine Translation Has Reached End of Life.” Hey, it is Facebook. Truth for sure. I learned:
Scale is actually one reason Facebook has invested in its own MT technology. According to Packer [Facebook wizard’’], there are more than two trillion posts and comments, which grows by over a billion each day. “Pretty clearly, we’re not going to solve this problem with a roomful or even a building-full of human translators,” he quipped, adding that to have even “a hope of solving this problem, we need AI; we need automation.” The other reason is adaptability. “We tried that,” said Packer about using third-party MT, but it “did not work well enough for our needs.” The reason? The language of Facebook is different from what is on the rest of the Web. Packer described Facebook language as “extremely informal. It’s full of slang, it’s very regional.” He said it is also laden with metaphors, idiomatic expressions, and is riddled with misspellings (most of them intentional). Additionally, as in the rest of the world, there is a marked difference in the way different age groups communicate on Facebook.
I wonder if it is time to send death notices to the vendors who use statistical methods? Perhaps I should wait a bit. Predictions are often different from reality.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2016
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