Amazon is Testing an AI Tool That Automatically Translates Books Into Other Languages (engadget.com) 30
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon just introduced an AI tool that will automatically translate books into other languages. The appropriately-named Kindle Translate is being advertised as a resource for authors that self publish on the platform.
The company says the tool can translate entire books between English and Spanish and German to English. Amazon promises that more languages are coming down the pike. It's available right now in a beta form to select authors enrolled in the Kindle Direct Publishing platform. There's a broader rollout planned for a later date.
The company says the tool can translate entire books between English and Spanish and German to English. Amazon promises that more languages are coming down the pike. It's available right now in a beta form to select authors enrolled in the Kindle Direct Publishing platform. There's a broader rollout planned for a later date.
That will work well (Score:5, Insightful)
This type of translation doe not even really work for technical texts. For other books, they will just lose their soul.
Re: (Score:2)
I would think technical texts would be *harder* for an AI tool to get right, not easier. This is because technical texts contain many words that *should not* be translated, even if there is a translation. For example, the word "Windows" as in the Microsoft product, should not be translated, even if the rest of the document is translated.
Re:That will work well (Score:4, Informative)
I work in localization. Technical writing is often easier for machine-translation systems, because the writing is (ideally) deliberately clear, concise, and structured.
The terminology issue you mention can be addressed at least partially by feeding any such machine-translation system a list of words and phrases to keep as-is in the target text.
Fiction, meanwhile, often involves complicated and subtle wordplay, which no AI system is going to handle very well.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting!
Re: (Score:3)
"My hovercraft is full of eels"
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter how much soul a book has if someone can't read it.
Re: (Score:2)
So you advocate reading things that are not wort the time reading them?
Great idea in theory (Score:3)
In practice, translation is difficult and more development will be needed before AI can do it really right
As usual, companies afflicted by FOMO are deploying immature tech so that they can tell shareholders that they have an AI strategy
Re: Great idea in theory (Score:1)
Sounds like a terrible idea (Score:2, Informative)
They won't have all the nuances like colloquialisms and idioms and whatever other personality could be part of the text. They couldn't adapt it for the culture properly.
Re:Sounds like a terrible idea (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, everyone knows it won't be the same if you don't read your Shakespeare in the original Klingon.
Re: Sounds like a terrible idea (Score:1)
Already thrilled to learn what erotic literature.. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I can see it now:
The horror. The horror. (Score:3)
If this is anything like AI generated subtitles, it's going to be really awful.
Re: The horror. The horror. (Score:1)
Funny example (Score:2)
For those who'd like a chuckle at how sideways translations can go, take a look at English as She is Spoke, circa 1883.
The book was meant to be a serious attempt to offer a Portuguese to English translation guidebook. Unfortunately, the (Portuguese) author knew no English, but he knew some French and he knew a guy who knew French and some English.
It's still in print - there is even a version with a Foreword by Mark Twain: https://www.powells.com/book/e... [powells.com]
Re: Funny example (Score:1)
Smart Phone's Translating Apps & Websites (Score:2)
I'd like to see smart phones translating apps not translated to the local language.
Why stop at apps? Web pages too. iBooks? Kindle etc.
As an App developer, a lone one man app developer, I'd love to reach a wider audience but translation is a big overhead to take on.
My hope is that the phone's will take care of this at some point,
Opt in/out with caveats and I think most using it would accept it as a good compromise.
Good (Score:1)
Now I can read Tolkien in the original Middle Earth languages and Star Trek novels in the original Vulcan.
Or at least a cheap facsimilie thereof.
My hovercraft ... (Score:2)
They wish it was that easy! (Score:2)
Translation is more of an art than a technique.
Capturing a pun or an allusion in it's original form and translating it into another pun and allusion with e same strenght in another language requires much more than just AI.
At the point that even humans need reworks and reviews before releasing a translation.
Forget about your indian recipe or Chinese programming manual. We are talking about poetry, novels and the likes.
Going to work SO well with humour (Score:2)
Indeterminacy of Translation (Score:2)
Can I point people to Quine's thesis on the indeterminacy of translation.
The major point is that there is not and cannot be a determinate and uniquely correct translation, meaning, and reference for any linguistic expression
coming soon: (Score:2)
The Intolerable Fluffiness of Existence by Milun Kundera
The Tripartite Corporeal Conundrum by Liu Cixin
Livestock Smallholding by George Orwell
My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels by Woody Caribou
no thanks (I'm an author) (Score:2)
Won't happen, at least not with my books.
There is a reason writing the last one took two years. Many of its passages have very carefully considered wordings. Intentional ambiguities. Alliterations. Words chosen because the other term for the same thing is too similar to another thing that occurs in the same paragraph. Names picked with intention, by the sound of them (harsher or softer, for example).
I've used AI extensively in many fields. Including translations. It's pretty good for normal texts like newsp
I'm particularly looking forward to (Score:2)
"The Three Mouseketeers"
As someone who writes English, not American... (Score:2)
...I can see this could be useful for preventing reviews that claim I can't spell or do grammar.
It needs to be opt-in, not opt-out - not only for fear of butchering an author's beautiful sentences, but also because some authors who self-publish in English are successful enough that publishers of books in other languages sometimes pay for the right to publish a translation. Those contracts are usually exclusive, meaning that the author agrees not to let anyone else publish a translation of that book in that