After thousands of votes are cast testing machine translation engines on Gabble On, results seem to start taking shape. Here are some of the findings so far as reported by Gabble On.
As predicted in our blog Machine Translation engines put to the test!, it appears that survey takers prefer Google Translate’s results across the board. In a few languages like Arabic, Polish and Dutch, the preference is overwhelming with votes for Google doubling its nearest competitor!
However, once voters that have self defined their fluency in the source or target language as “limited” are removed, the contest became closer in some of the heavily trafficked languages. For instance, Bing Translator led in German, while Babelfish led in Chinese. Google however maintained a lead in Spanish, Japanese, and French.
Limited fluency voters chose Google over Bing by 2 to 1. They also chose Google over Yahoo Babelfish by 5 to 1.
For phrases below 50 characters, Google’s lead in Spanish, Japanese, and French disappeared, while Microsoft’s lead in German widened. Beyond 50 characters, Google’s relative performance seemed to improve across the board.
To eliminate any potential subjectivity toward a solution, on March 4th, Gabble On implemented changes to the survey hiding the brands and randomizing the positions of the results before voting. It will be interesting to see if brand bias played a big part in the results so far and how the new results will shape up.
If you have not done so yet, put the engines to the test and vote. Remember, one lucky winner will get the Apple iPAD electronic reader and eleven lucky winners will get Enabling Globalization: A Guide to Using Localization to Penetrate International Markets, the latest eBook in the industry on globalization and localization done the right way!
Vote on: www.gabble-on.com/SurveySelector.aspx. Also, let us know what you think about the test and the results.
3 Comments
I would say.. We cannot expect quality translation from the Machines!
I have shared some feedback from a variety of professionals that you may find interesting
Here is the intro:
MT has been in the news a lot of late and professionals are probably getting tired of this new hype wave. Major stories in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have been circulating endlessly – please don’t send them to me, I have seen them.
There is also another initiative by Gabble On which asks volunteers to evaluate Google Translate, Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo Babel Fish translations. And bloggers like John Yunker and many others have posted the preliminary results to that perennial question “Which Engine Translates Best?” on their blogs.
This certainly shows that inquiring minds want to know and that this is a question that will not go away. It is probably useful to have a general sense from this kind of news but does this kind of coverage really leave you any wiser and more informed?
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