My experiences with Google Translate

Machine Translation is a sub-sect of computational linguistics. Computational linguistics is all about studying how to use computer software to translate text/speech from one natural language to another natural language. Any language which is typically used for communication (spoken, signed & written)is called Natural Language .

Machine translation is all about performing simple substitution of words. But this is not just enough to create a good translation due to the complexities in natural language translation. The Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) is one popular paradigm of Machine translation although there are many in the field of research now. The SMT uses word based translation and in in this, it is necessary to assume that each word in a language covers the same concept or meaning in other languages. In practice this is not really true.

Another thing is due to morphology (sentence formation) and Out Of Vocabulary(OOV) issues, simple word-based translation can't translate well. For example each word in a language could produce any number of words in other language (flower - பூ, மலர், புஷ்பம் & புய்ப்பம்), — sometimes none at all ( The Japanese word ‘Kyoikumama’ is an example for it - “A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement”).

Few days ago, I tried to understand the Google’s translation (not transliteration) service’s functionality. It is a free translation service that provides instant translations. By looking for patterns from millions of documents to decide the best translation for us with intelligent (?!) guesses, the Google’s translation service is translating natural languages.

I learnt from that site that Google Translation service uses the SMT method and I experienced few interesting things while I tried it. I have displayed them here to illustrate the shortcomings in SMT. I also very firmly believe that they are the perfect examples for the issues in natural language translation describe here.

The first picture shows how a word called ’sentence’ is translated (Example 1). I don’t want to give any explanations to this, as I assume that the picture itself says a lot. Due to my inquisitiveness, I made another attempt and encountered a similar experience (Example 2). But though the translation is a fallacy according to linguistics, I have an opinion that it’s not wrong (just Kidding!).

Note: Google has given a clear disclaimer that the service may not be perfect and it requires more human intervention to improve the quality of translation.

Example 1

Example 2

Google's New Look and Feel

A revamped homepage makes Google more attractive. The minimalist home page has been re-engineered with a sleek black bar across the top. The new look has been pushed to few users on Tuesday and a wider set of users saw it on Wednesday.

Improved user experience is the key to the reach of any website even if its Google. It seems that Google is working on the look and feel more and more rather than the relevance of the search results (He He, I can’t write anything without dragging my love interest, semantic web).

Also I can find the size of the Google logo (the doodle) has reduced. Few links that had appeared near the search box have been placed at the bottom.
Google has also launched Plus One, but I am still hesitant to use or experience it. The previous disastrous Buzz and wave made me cautious. Let's wait and see if it clicks for Google.

Thanks to the authorities!

I am so happy to see the news yesterday that the Tamil Nadu Government has decided to operate special buses for the school children. Two months ago I read the sad news of a 16 year old boy called Bharathkumar who slipped and fell off from the overcrowded bus near Tambaram, Chennai. He succumbed to head injuries. It hurts a lot when such things happen and his case is not an isolated one. Statistics says that over three lakh children in the city take Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) bus to school every day with many of them travelling more than 8 km to school.

Bharathkumar’s mother would have told him to take a less crowded bus everyday but unfortunately the less crowded bus never came. I was very annoyed with the fact this happens very frequently in Chennai and authorities have not taken any steps towards putting an end to such disastrous things. With ladies special buses being operated across the city, a special bus for the students would do a world of good to many school going boys and girls who struggle a lot with huge school bags.

It might be adventurous to say that it’s a great thing to experience the footboard travel and to fight for a leg space. You might be calling me a sick old man who prefers to stay away from adventures but I am not worried about it.

With woefully inadequate bus services we are killing the school going children. I have also seen the obnoxious and irritating behaviour of few bus conductors and drivers towards school going girl children. The high class brats who have studied in international schools and village folks who studied in schools in their home’s backyard like me can’t feel or understand their trouble.

There’s no point in arguing about changing the staggering school timings. Increasing the number of buses and introducing more special buses for school going children is the need of the hour and am really glad to see an announcement of our state government recently to operate more special buses in the routes with clusters of schools.

As a common man and a citizen of this country/state I am so thankful to the authorities who have brought a ray of hope to the children who are forced to travel in footboard. Life is too precious and it’s the duty of the Government to provide a conducive and safe environment for the students to focus on their studies. I have not seen Bharathkumar or his parents. But everyone can feel their pain and grief. We can’t do anything to make his parents smile but we can put an end to such things. No more Bharthkumars.

Practicing SEO – beginner to beginner!

Recently I designed a static website. The website offers no functional features but provides plenty of information to its target viewers. The client wanted the site to be listed in Google’s search results while searching with a specific keyword. I was reading blogs and online tutorials about SEO so as to improve my search ranking. As both Google and Bing refused to list that site even after several months since the site is hosted, as was working vigorously to do something towards improving the ranking. Now i am quiet happy with search results. All the blogs, books and experts revealed two major facts: (1) SEO has to do very little with technology (2) Content and its description too are the kings.

Though it is evident that the search giants like Google, Bing and yahoo ranks the site on the basis of topic, quality, reliability and many other factors, we can still do some magic with the meta tags. We can’t improve the ranking of the site just with meta tags, but are really simple tools to improve your standings in search engines.

Here I have listed few of the most important aspects of SEO.

1. Keywords in Meta tag – specify the keywords that describe the site and its services better. If you are running a matrimonial services website than say brides, bridegrooms, profiles, photos, horoscopes, US(!), matrimonial, Chennai, sub sect no bar, etc.

2. Descriptions – Precisely describe the contents of that page – make sure you write the right thing.

3. Links – Let they are appropriate and useful. Raise the following question several times to yourself: “Does this link help my target customer find what they are looking for?”. Don’t add that link until you are really convinced that it is necessary.

4. The contents - The best advice is to make the information on your website useful, descriptive, honest, and compelling to your customers. In one word I can say KISS (Keep it simple, stupid).

If you want to know more, you can read some great books, blogs and sites. I would suggest Website Optimization by Andrew B. King book for interesting real world cases.

That's it! Focus on your content and describe it well. Bubyeee!