Change in Google Chinese (BETA) translation

Google no longer using Systran. Google's new statistical version?

[Meta_Vision]

At the end of last year, I ran a little experiment with Google's "BETA" machine translation of English to Chinese (with reverse-translation back to English) so I'd have some concept of quality change whenever Google switched to its new statistical version announced at the "Google Factory Tour" last year.

This morning ... I went back and re-ran some of the pages through Google's language tools ... and am seeing different results.

NOTE: Google was using Systran software. I reran the pages through that and there are (almost) no changes ... but Google's translation is VERY different.

Has anyone seen anything about this change in Google's translation tools?

[tedster]

Thanks for the report. I've been looking for any news about this and so far I see nothing, but what you noticed is very suggestive. One possible alternative explanation: Systran may now have given Google something proprietary?

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[Excuse slow response, I apparently didn't set "email notification" when I posted]

Much appreciate your reply. (Google's machine translation algorithm is probably not that important to most of the members of this forum... but I think "in the big picture" this kind of thing will be.)

I've been experimenting a little this morning...
(NOTE: Can't post Chinese characters here, so I'll just list # characters)

"REVERSE TRANSLATION" COMPARISON

Google language tools: (“New” Chinese BETA)
Truth brings the light. > [7 Chinese characters] > Dawn brought the truth.

Babelfish (SYSTRAN)
Truth brings the light > [5 Chinese characters] > The truth brings the light.

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P.S./COMMENT: Since I don't speak Chinese, my current "heuristic" metric
is "reversible is better." I.E., A "perfect" algorithm could translate from English to Chinese back to English without change.

This may not be good heuristic. :) But if it has any validity, "New" Google BETA seems "worse" than "Old" Google BETA in Chinese ... But, as I said, I don't speak Chinese.

Still looking and testing ...