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	<title>Some stuff &#187; language conventions</title>
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		<title>Google stuck in NLP uncanny valley</title>
		<link>https://blog.yhuang.org/?p=263</link>
		<comments>https://blog.yhuang.org/?p=263#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:54:41 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boston]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[compound]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[language conventions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[language maps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[maps china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[target language]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[toponym]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[translation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vain attempts]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://scripts.mit.edu/~zong/wpress/?p=263</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Google Maps (China) tries automated toponym translation and fails. Putting aside the question of how useful street-level translation really is for tourists rather than, say, conquerors (if you can&#8217;t read local language maps, how will you read the street signs?), this is actually 80% of the way there for pure transliteration items (a bit stilted). [...]]]></description>
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<p>Google Maps (China) tries automated toponym translation and fails.</p>
<p>Putting aside the question of how useful street-level translation really is for tourists rather than, say, conquerors (if you can&#8217;t read local language maps, how will you read the street signs?), this is actually 80% of the way there for pure transliteration items (a bit stilted). The main problems, in red circles, come from compound toponyms with attached literal meanings (X Pond, X Hill, X Course, Old X, etc.) or with target-language conventions already (Massachusetts X, Oxford X, etc.). Those require translation rather than transliteration, and there the Google bot enters <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley">uncanny valley</a> with its vain attempts, which <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&#038;sl=zh-CN&#038;tl=en&#038;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsupport%2Fforum%2Fp%2Fmaps%2Fthread%3Ftid%3D1a75de0be470a5ef%26hl%3Dzh-TW" target="_top">bothers</a> people a lot.</p>
<p>All in all, there were only a few true full-blown errors. One was &#8220;Boston College&#8221;, which got translated as the phrase used for &#8220;Boston University&#8221;. Another was &#8220;Fort Independence&#8221;, which was just wrong to be carried with no syntactical change into Chinese. &#8220;General Edward Lawrence Logan&#8221; was parsed very badly, resulting in a transliteration of &#8220;General&#8221; as if some kind of Hispanic first name.</p>
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