Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in Google Translate

Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by planetjones on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @03:25AM (#12965335)

So for German:

Our baby is due in January.

goes to

Unser Baby ist im Januar fällig

My German colleagues assure me Google's neural network needs a bit more training on that one. I often use Google Translate to go back from the German I have (badly) created to English, as a further check that it's somewhat understandable. In terms of it replacing asking real humans for help... I think it's still a long way away, but good to see Google investing in it.

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by lorenzhs on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @04:20AM (#12965542)

It clearly failed on context there - "fällig" does mean "due", but when referring to an invoice. "due" isn't used for baby delivery dates in German, the sentence would be structured differently, probably something like "Unser Baby kommt im Januar" (literally "our baby is coming in January"). That's exactly the kind of thing I hoped this new model would catch, but apparently that's still a bit too much to expect.

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by anselm_eickhoff on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @04:24AM (#12965559)

This one is actually not too bad - there is only a very slight difference between "due" (which can mean both something like "shall be done" and "bound to happen") and "fällig" (which means only "shall be done"). Grammatically and semantically, this almost never matters, it only misses the much higher cultural context of it being slightly weird to refer to a baby as a "task".

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by bergjs on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @03:47AM (#12965407)

> Unser Baby ist im Januar fällig

Freely translated: "Our baby is going down in January."

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by mda on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @03:49AM (#12965419)

In my tests it gave better results for longer sentences with more context.

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by detaro on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @04:48AM (#12965679)

At least it's clearly understandable and grammatically correct, and only a slightly odd (distant) phrasing. I wouldn't be surprised at all if I heard someone saying it exactly like that in an off-the-cuff remark.

Interestingly I wouldn't know how to translate the German back to English while preserving the feel of the phrasing. Languages just don't map 1:1.

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by acqq on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @06:20AM (#12966086)

The baby is "fällig" maybe could be "back"-translated (from that translation) to English carrying the sense of the awkwardness as

"Our baby is being scheduled for January"

which maybe brings some "huh?" But I'm not a native speaker, I'm just trying to get an opinion of these who are.

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by pantalaimon on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @10:54AM (#12968087)

German here, I don't find that translation odd at all, maybe a bit colloquial but I could totally imagine someone saying that.

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Re:Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in ... by cygx on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @12:18PM (#12969131)

German here, I don't find that translation odd at all

Just as another data point, I do. I'd only use it sarcastically, like

Und, wann ist denn der kleine Scheißer fällig?

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