In a real-world scenario involving people using seven languages

Mar 26, 2010 14:21 GMT  ·  By

Machine translation holds a lot of promise and it has certainly progressed in recent years thanks to efforts from companies like Google. But is it good enough to handle hundreds of people talking in several different languages and allow them to understand each other? This was the question both the BBC and Google asked and set out to respond to. It turns out that the Google Translate technology was up to the task with most people impressed with what it could do.

Granted, the expectations were probably low as people who don't necessarily follow the subject may not be aware of how much things have progressed recently. Of course, past experience with machine translation products yielding results that were amusing at best and frustrating at worst may have created this mindset. The fact is, computers are more than able to make sense of almost anything we can throw at them as long as you don't expect the translations to be on par with using an actual human interpreter.

"Earlier this month BBC launched an experiment using Google Translate to faciliate real-time discussion across languages. The project was part of the BBC’s SuperPower series which explored the transformative power of the internet. On SuperPower Nation Day, BBC readers from around the world were invited to discuss the Nation Day event online--and have their comments translated live for others to read," Jeff Chin, product manager for new technologies at Google, explains.

The BBC has a follow-up story noting the results of the event and the overall feel seems to be a very positive one. Most people were surprised it worked at all and the conversation was almost always intelligible for everyone. "I believe this can work!" Google translated Nathana's message from Brazil, which was originally, "Acredito que isto pode dar certo!"

Other phrases were more tricky for the algorithms to figure out. "That the budget of one war enough to satisfy the hungry Africa, not to mention the budget arm of one of the major powers," Dowry Allowathb from Khartoum, Sudan answered in Arabic to the question, "If you could say one thing to the world, what would it be?" The translation was far from perfect, but the message got through. You can check out the conversation as it happened on the dedicated BBC site.