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This is because in 2016, Google started to use a complex machine learning system called ‘the neural network learning’. You might have noticed that Google Tran slate’s translations became noticeably better in the past couple of years. Because when context and sentence structure came into play, Google Translate was not able to process and construct meaningful translations. But things would tend to get ugly once you try to put a longer text with complex grammar. Given that it was looking for corresponding words or phrases, it has been good for short sentences or phrases. When it was first launched, Google Translate heavily relied on online statistics – meaning that when you put down a word or sentence, Google Translate would scan the whole internet database, find the available human-translated documents in the given language pair, and detect the most frequently used version of any expression. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Even though it looks like an easy process, behind is a complex web of machine learning. How it works? First you have to select a language pair, copy & paste or write down your source and the translation instantly appears in the other box. Given that the greatest number of documents are available in the English language online, it definitely makes the whole process easier. It usually translates the source into English and then to the target language. Google Translate offers translations in 109 languages as of April 2021 and translates a total of over 100 billion words daily.Ĭontrary to popular belief, Google Translate does not actually provide direct translations from one language into another. Google Translate is a free tool developed by Google that enables you to translate sentences, documents and even websites from one language into another in a matter of seconds.
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Life saver to some and an ongoing joke to others, have you ever wondered how Google Translate actually works?
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Although it’s notorious for being not the highest-quality translation tool in the game, it has become the internet’s go-to source for translations over the years and there is no denying that it does come in handy from time to time. Whether for a French assignment at school or to order a coffee in a touristic trip to Italy, you probably heard and used Google Translate at least once before.
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