Will Machines Ever Master Translation?

Will Machines Ever Master Translation? via @IEEESpectrum

Not only the data, but the quality of the data. If it’s relying on a bunch of translations that were poorly done, then it could be giving poor results, because statistically there are more instances of that poor translation than there are of a good translation. Of course, the measure of what is a good translation and what isn’t is just as subjective as which of those passages—the translated passages you read— is the best [laughs]. You know, one person might think that the King James version is the best because it’s more popular and more well known. Others might prefer other versions or other translations. So that’s where it gets very complicated. But generally you might see over time that with a system like Google Translate, you get a poor translation, but then you come back a month later, a year later, and you get a better translation. What’s interesting about this is as ...

Full article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/robotics/artificial-inte...