Freeware Tool GT4T for Translating Text
October 20, 2020
Here is a more efficient solution for those translating from one (human) language to another. Ghacks.net suggests we “Translate Microsoft Office Documents or Text from Any Word Editor and Get Dictionary Definitions Instantly with GT4T.” Writer Ashwin explores the freeware tool and takes us along for the ride with instructions and plenty of screenshots. He writes:
“Translating is no easy task, it requires precision, and you may be constantly looking up words that you don’t know or are unsure about. Opening up the browser every few seconds isn’t going to be productive either if you are working in desktop programs, e.g. Microsoft Word. GT4T is a freeware tool that can help translate text from any word editor quickly. The name stands for Google Translate for Translators, and obviously the program requires an internet connection to work. It does support other translation services, more on this later. The application doesn’t have a GUI window to work with. Instead, it runs in the background, you can access it using a couple of keyboard shortcuts.”
The write-up walks us through setting up the app with the languages one is working with and describes how to translate text in any program. One important caveat—GT4T replaces the original text (in the document and on the clipboard) with the translation, so users will want to save the original version separately. The tool supports the following services, and provides a way to switch between them: Google Neural, Microsoft Translator, Youdao, Yandex, Google Phrase Based, DeepL Pro, Baidu, Tencent, Sogou, CloudTranslation, NiuTrans, Systran, TradooIT, and Papago.
Ashwin describes the pop-up dictionary function and tells us how to create custom profiles with specified languages for different projects. GT4T is available for Mac and Windows, though it does not have a version tailored to mobile devices. Users may notice a “Snore Toast” shortcut in Windows’ Start menu—do not be alarmed, we’re advised, that is just to display toast notifications related to the tool.
Cynthia Murrell, October 20, 2020
French Computer Terminology
August 1, 2020
This is a helpful resource. However, the term for “spreadsheet” is not included. If you want that spreadsheet holding a summary of your electricity bills, be sure to know the word “tableur.” You can find the collection of terms at this link. The compilation is not une faute passible d’un coup franc, but let’s check with the video assisted referee to be sure.
Stephen E Arnold, August 1, 2020
Translation: Improvement Attracts Money
May 21, 2020
Foreign languages remain a problem for modern society, even with the bevy of translation software available. Most translation software lack native language fluidity and are unreliable. Lilt makes AI-powered business translation software and Venture Beat says that: “Lilt Raises $25 Million For AI Enterprise Translation Tools.” Lilt plans to use the money for further NLP research and go-to-market strategy acceleration.
Lilt’s clients translate information into seven languages and find the manual translation process slows down business practices. Lilt overcomes translation issues with:
“Lilt tackles this with human translators and CAT, a tool that helps them work more efficiently, using hotkeys, style guides, and a proprietary neural machine translation engine. CAT can be tailored to a company’s content, translation history, and other linguistic assets and configured to automatically add in previously translated segments when it finds matches within documents. The tool’s termbase and lexicon features help translators use the correct terminology in a given context, chiefly by showing them a range of possible translations for a certain word. And the engine taps AI and machine learning to analyze translation data and make predictive suggestions.”
Like most AI technology, Lilt’s systems requires new data, in this case languages, to learn. Translators work with the engine to accept, amend, or reject its translations.
The company has competitors such as Unbabel and the market for AI-based translation software is projected to be worth $983.3 million by 2022.
Didn’t Google “solve” machine translation already too? Obviously not completely.
Whitney Grace, May 21, 2020
Google Translate: Some Improvements Arrive
January 29, 2020
Google may be struggling with A B testing, but it is improving its translation capabilities.
While Google Translation is more or less accurate, depending on the language, it does have it flaws, especially when it comes to offline translation. SlashGear shares an update on the translation service “Google translate Now Offers Higher Quality Offline Translations.”
Google Translation’s offline services premiered a few years ago, but their quality cannot compare with the online counterpart. The newest update improves the offline translation service by 12% when it comes to grammar and sentence structures. Asians languages have seen improved accuracy with the update.
“Google Translate is best when used with an Internet connection, but there are times the app will prove useful in the absence of WiFi or mobile data. While traveling in a foreign country, for example, someone who doesn’t have mobile data access will find Google Translate’s offline support useful, though the results are often less accurate and polished.”
Google improved its NLP on fifty-nine languages. The old offline translation were understandable, but sounded awkward and like someone learned the language from a textbook. The new update is more grammatically correct and actually makes sense in modern vernacular languages. There’s also new offline transliteration support for ten new languages. Users who translate their own language into one of the new ten languages sees the new original script and the transliteration for accuracy. It helps people who cannot read the language’s writing by putting the sentences in the Latin alphabet.
This is useful for tourists, researchers, polyglots, and students who need to finish their foreign language homework. Now about that mythical A B testing, which is part of the data driven environment for Googlers, right?
Whitney Grace, January 29, 2020
Games Go International: New Challenge for LE?
October 12, 2019
Gamers the world over need no longer struggle to master games in a foreign tongue. The International Business Times reports, “AI-Based Emulator Will Translate Previously Untranslated Languages.” While some video games have multiple language options, the most sought-after ones tend to be available in just English, and many leading RPGs are first released in Japanese only. This new emulator taps into Google Translate to solve that problem. Writer Rishbah Jain informs us:
“A new software aims to change this equation. RetroArch emulator 1.7.8 has introduced an artificial intelligence feature which will use machine learning to master translation. It will translate the text used in the game to a language of the user’s choice. The player will get the option to see the text or get it through voice instructions. The former will disturb the gameplay, the latter won’t. It will do this using Google Translate. … The developers claim that the emulator can work with all kinds of arcade and classic consoles. Not only can it be used to translate English to other languages, but also the other way around. ‘You can set the source and target language already. How well it works is up to the translation services being used,’ the company behind the project, LibRetro says in its YouTube video on the emulator. This means that for gamers whose native language is English, they no longer need to go blind into a Japanese game.”
Jain acknowledges that setting up an emulator, which must be done before one begins playing, is a step that many gamers will skip (impatient beings that we are.) For those willing to take the trouble, though, RetroArch has posted instructions here.
Will policeware systems process the comments and emojis used in some online games’ chat functions?
Cynthia Murrell, October 11, 2019
Google Translate Continues to Improve
September 10, 2019
Google Translate is a handy tool, imperfect though it may be. Google made some cosmetic changes to the UI earlier this year, and now is rolling more substantial improvements. Pakistan’s Technology Times reports, “Google AI Translation Adds 60 New Languages.” Not only are more languages, from Afrikanns to Zulu, now included, the translate-images function has gotten a boost. Writer Sayyed Shehzer Abbas tells us:
“The prevalent tech giant Google is rolling out a significant update to the camera feature on its Translate app. The new version of the app adds support for 60 new languages. It’s great news for regular users of Google Translate, where the camera feature is fantastically useful for translating things like menus and signs. Key to the update is the integration of Google’s AI translation methods, known as neural machine translation (NMT). These models have been incorporated into Google Lens and the web version of Translate, but they are now supporting instant camera translation, too.
We noted these languages:
“New languages supported in the update include: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Estonian, Greek, Hindi, Igbo, Javanese, Kurdish, Latin, Latvian, Malay, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Samoan, Sesotho, Slovenian, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yoruba, Urdu and Zulu.
We learned:
“The updated version of the Google translate app will also automatically detect what language it’s looking at, which is handy if you’re traveling in a region where multiple languages are common.”
The write-up emphasizes the importance of language translation to companies like Google. It has become a benchmark for evaluating an enterprise’s AI capabilities, and it underpins software many have come to rely on, like AI assistance, commerce, and social media. Will Translate put Google ahead of the competition?
Cynthia Murrell, September 10, 2019
Google Translate: Refactored via India and Fixed via SEO Expert
June 14, 2019
Navigate to Republic World, produced in India. The article “Google Translation of I Am Sad to See Hong Kong Become Part of China Converted the Word Sad to Happy.” DarkCyber does not know the source of this translation, nor does DarkCyber know if the information in the story is accurate. We noted this passage in the Republic World story:
Google users discovered that when people entered the phrase “I am sad to see Hong Kong become part of China” the suggested translation in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese converted the word “sad” to “happy”.
Here’s the kicker. Search engine optimization expert and now low profile Google “search” expert was allowed to state:
It was not immediately clear what caused the blunder but Danny Sullivan, an official at Google, said in a tweet “we’re looking into why we had this translation and expect to have a fix to resolve it soon”.
Yep, a fix. According to the next paragraph in the story, “The error has now been fixed.”
Fast action from the Google.
It is amazing what search engine optimization experts can accomplish.
Stephen E Arnold, June 14, 2019
Mayochup: Why Machine Translation Can Let You Down
May 20, 2019
Short honk: DarkCyber spotted a story about “mayochup.” The word’s origin is Kraft Heinz. According to The Star:
Kraft Heinz has acknowledged an “unfortunate translation” of its latest buzzy condiment of pre-mixed mayonnaise-ketchup that has reached Canada. Mayochup, which was a crowd-sourced name, can mean something entirely different in some Cree dialects, according to linguists and Cree-speakers.
The newspaper did not spell out the translation of the Cree word. That’s okay. Google did not recognize the word, preferring to render the translation as “mayochup.” Helpful.
Is this important? To the Cree, yes. To Heinz Kraft, probably because it will cost real money to deal with the PR problem. For users of automated translation systems, if the word is a new one, the translation won’t reflect the actual meaning.
That means some high flying technologists will be mayochuped.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2019
Firefox Translation Add In
May 17, 2019
The DarkCyber team encounters information in a number of languages. For years, we relied on Google Translate, but the limits on document size proved an annoyance. FreeTranslate.com has been more useful. We have an older installation of some Systran modules.
DarkCyber learned that Firefox has returned to the “translate now” territory with Translate Man. You can get an overview of the functionality of the add in in “Translate anything instantly in Firefox with Translate Man.” Translate Man uses Google’s API.
We haven’t tested the functionality of the add in in an extensive way. It did translate words and short passages in a helpful way.
The write up identifies useful features that add in delivers. Two are a translate on hover feature and a pronunciation function so you can “hear” the word or passage.
In our experience, some text requires a native speaker of the language to translate with accuracy.
Google has introduced its wonderfully named Translatotron. You can read about that innovation in “Google Unveils Translatotron, Its Speech-to-Speech Translation System.”
Now about these systems’ ability to translate the argot of insiders involved in “interesting” work in North Korea or Iran? What about making sense of emojis in clear text messages?
Someday perhaps.
Stephen E Arnold, May 17, 2019
China: Patent Translation System
May 10, 2019
Patents are usually easily findable documents. However, reading a patent once found is a challenge. Up the ante if the patent is in a language the person does not read. “AI Used to Translate Patent Documents” provides some information about a new system available from the Intellectual Property Publishing House. According to the article in China Daily:
The system can translate Chinese into English, Japanese and German and vice versa. Its accuracy in two-way translation between Chinese and Japanese has reached 95 percent, far more than the current industry average, and the rest has topped 90 percent…
The system uses a dictionary, natural language processing algorithms, and a computational model. In short, this is a collection of widely used methods tuned over a decade by the Chinese organization. In that span, Thomson Reuters dropped out of the patent game, and just finding patents, even in the US, can be a daunting task.
Translation has been an even more difficult task for some lawyers, researchers, analysts, and academics.
If the information in the China Daily article is accurate, China may have an intellectual property advantage., The write up offers some details, which sound interesting; for example:
- Translation of a Japanese document: five seconds
- Patent documents record 90 percent of a country’s technology and innovation
- China has “a huge database of global patents”.
And the other 10 percent? Maybe other methods are employed.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2019
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