Tower of Babel collapses
Electronic translation devices on the rise, but technological challenges linger
When Buzzfeed editor Matt Stopera traveled to China in January to visit his soul mate for the second time, he barely needed a translator to accompany him on this peculiar journey, as a pocketsized electronic translator device could help him figure out how to communicate with “Brother Orange.”
The story about Stopera and Brother Orange, whose real name is Li Hongjun – a local farmer in Meizhou, South China’s Guangdong Province – went viral on both Chinese and US social networks in 2015.
One day, the American news editor noticed mysterious photos of a man taking selfies in an orange orchard popping up in his new iPhone’s photostream, after his old one was stolen in New York. He later wrote an article about the incident, which soon accumulated hundreds upon thousands of views.
With the help of Chinese internet users, he eventually found out exactly where this man lives in China, and he traveled all the way there to meet him. Li, who does not speak any foreign languages, became Stopera’s friend after the meet-up. And now, even Warner Bros and Buzzfeed are planning to co-release a film about this “stolenphone bromance.”
When Stopera and Li met for the first time, each had to hire a translator, which was the only way for the pair to communicate. “By comparison, our reunion in January was much easier,” Li said, as he had bought an electronic translator device from Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com Inc (JD) for about 600 yuan ($94.80).
The gadget, NetEase’s Youdao translation egg, supports the Android system but can only operate by connecting to the internet. Based on neural machine translation (NMT), an end-to-end learning approach for automated translation, the machine can be used to translate Chinese into 26 other languages including English, French, and Russian.
But NetEase is not the only Chinese tech firm rushing into the electronic translation sector. New York-listed search engine developer Sogou Inc on Monday launched its travel translator device on JD, which “is a strategic product showcasing the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) development,” Sogou said in a statement sent to the Global Times.
The device, which combines several technologies such as NMT and voice recognition, provides translation services from Chinese to 17 other languages including English, French, Arabic and Korean. Priced at 1,498 yuan ($237.3), Sogou’s latest product can also instantly translate scanned text from photos with its optical character recognition (OCR) technology.
A white-collar worker surnamed Chang who is based in Guangzhou, capital of South China’s Guangdong Province, said she is considering buying one. “As more elderly people in my family want to travel overseas now, this device will tackle language barriers,” she said.
New trend
Chinese tourists made 130 million overseas trips in 2017, representing a year-on-year increases of 7 percent.
China’s recent travel boom has become a boon for electronic translator device makers.
“Our company released an electronic translator gadget last year, which can translate spoken collegelevel English,” Liu Qingfeng, a deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress and chairman of voice recognition company iFlytek, told reporters on Sunday on the sidelines of the ongoing two sessions, key annual government meetings.
“It will largely improve Chinese people’s communication with the outside world,” Liu said.
The electronic translator device developed by iFlytek can now translate Chinese into other languages including English, French and Spanish and is sold at nearly 3,000 yuan on JD. The first generation of the product, powered by NMT, has recorded a sales volume of 200,000 units since the end of 2016 until now, the company said in a statement.
The second-generation iFlytek translator device is much thinner and equipped with a screen and camera for translating text from photos, which is scheduled to come out in April.
As some people complain that electronic translator devices are too expensive, which are on average priced almost the same as smartphones, Chinese travel service provider Ctrip decided in December 2017 to team up with search engine giant Baidu Inc and start providing rental services for electronic translators. The service costs a customer 17 yuan per day, with a deposit of 500 yuan per unit, and in return, they can enjoy instant ChineseEnglish translations.
In the short term, the demand for electronic translators will keep growing, largely driven by increasing outbound travels, Xiang Yang, an industry analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting, told the Global Times. “More hardware makers have begun producing translator devices. In Shenzhen, some are making pocket-sized wearable devices,” he said.
Even some robotic companies have shifted their strategies to electronic translator products. For instance, Shanghai Tombot Robot Co, which has been focusing on service robots for three years, will launch its first electronic translator device on Sunday.
Mistranslation trouble
However, not all consumers are completely satisfied with electronic translator gadgets, especially as they cannot always accurately translate the meaning of what they wish to say.
“Sometimes when the machine translates what I say, my interlocutor still cannot understand what I am talking about,” said Zheng Chunhui, who works in the internet sector.
When he traveled to Southeast Asian countries last year, he had to survive by speaking broken English and using Google Translate, because “when there were different accents or adjectives in sentences, the translation on my machine was not understandable anymore,” he continued.
A 25-year-old British woman who now lives in Beijing said she has encountered the same issue on a number of occasions. “One time, a Chinese fitness instructor in my gym approached me with a translator machine, showing me a sentence translated into English which read ‘is it a person?’… After discussing the confusing incident with an Indian friend who speaks Chinese, we figured he wanted to ask me ‘are you alone?’ or ‘do you have company?’” she said.
To ensure the accuracy of their translations and to further upgrade their technologies as well as their products, companies have to take further steps in natural language processing (NLP), “which is an area that is hard to achieve,” Xiang said.
US tech giants like Amazon and Google have entered the consumer arena with the help of NLP and AI technologies through offering products like voice-activated speaker devices.
It’s important to take into consideration, however, that Chinese tech companies are still in the early stages of voice recognition development, the expert noted.