Wikipedia:Google Translate
{{Essay}}
In November 2016, Google Neural Machine Translation was introduced,{{cite news |last1=Lewis-Kraus |first1=Gideon |title=The Great A.I. Awakening |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html |accessdate=1 February 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=14 December 2016}} resulting in a significant increase in the accuracy of machine translation. What does this mean for the use of Google Translate on Wikipedia?
Recent research
- {{cite journal |last1=Jackson |first1=Jeffrey L |last2=Kuriyama |first2=Akira |last3=Anton |first3=Andreea |last4=Choi |first4=April |last5=Fournier |first5=Jean-Pascal |last6=Geier |first6=Anne-Kathrin |last7=Jacquerioz |first7=Frederique |last8=Kogan |first8=Dmitry |last9=Scholcoff |first9=Cecilia |last10=Sun |first10=Rao |title=The Accuracy of Google Translate for Abstracting Data From Non–English-Language Trials for Systematic Reviews |journal=Annals of Internal Medicine |date=30 July 2019 |volume=171 |issue=9 |pages=677 |doi=10.7326/M19-0891 |language=en |issn=0003-4819}}
- {{cite journal |last1=DuBose |first1=Joy |title=Russian, Japanese, and Latin Oh My! Using Technology to Catalog Non-English Language Titles |journal=Cataloging & Classification Quarterly |date=3 October 2019 |volume=57 |issue=7-8 |pages=496–506 |doi=10.1080/01639374.2019.1671929}}
- {{cite book |last1=Michael |first1=Erica B.|display-authors=etal |editor1-last=Lacruz |editor1-first=Isabel |editor2-last=Jääskeläinen |editor2-first=Riitta |title=Innovation and Expansion in Translation Process Research |date=2018 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company |isbn=978-90-272-6475-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=t7VGDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA191&dq=google+translate+accuracy+%22into+English%22&ots=aIe9_p1URH&sig=rMXT9aTSG9aPu00HobLIBnrV4NI#v=onepage&q=google%20translate%20accuracy%20%22into%20English%22&f=false |language=en |chapter=Human use of machine translation to extract information from texts|pp=191–}}
Pros and cons
;Pros
- The accuracy of Google Translate continues to improve, and in many cases approaches the accuracy of human translation
- Use of non-English sources can help counter systemic bias on Wikipedia, which skews to Anglocentric and Eurocentric perspectives
;Cons
- Accuracy may not be sufficient for all uses, and human translation is still more accurate
- The reliability and due weight of non-English sources must be established
;Caveats
- Translation into English is usually more accurate than translation from English
- Translation from languages related to English (i.e., Indo-European languages) is more accurate than translation from unrelated languages
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- As [https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/01/09/you-can-now-use-google-translate-to-translate-articles-on-wikipedia/ of 2019], Wikipedians can use Google translations under a free license (cc-by-sa-3.0)
- Previously, Wikimedia Legal had said that Google's translations likely do not create new copyright burdens