Google continues to innovate. Now it is expanding the reach of Google Translate to perform translations of poems. Yes yes, poetry!
If you ever tried to translate poetry, you know that it is a difficult task, given the need to understand the words “behind” the poem, which is often subjective.
This year, at the conference “Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)”, Google announced it will present research on the translation of poetry where it discusses the technical challenges of translating meter and rhymes.
Critics of this idea argue about the importance of preserving rhyme and meter in the translation of poetry. Some argue that to preserve the meaning, the form of the poem must be sacrificed, while others believe that the form is essential.
Google Translate is a machine translation system based on statistics. To translate, it searches a variety of possible translations and selects the most accurate from the statistical point of view. In order to translate poetry, this system should not only consider accuracy, but it must also consider rhyme and meter. To do this successfully, Google has changed its algorithm to sacrifice some accuracy and not affect the form.
In addition, Google Translate can translate any text in poetry. So you can specify the genre, for example, haiku or limerick. For now, all you have to do is wait, since this latest innovative idea from Google is still not released.
Although Google always offers new and surprising ideas, you can not deny that the human factor provides the creativity and ingenuity that a machine does not have (yet…) to translate complicated issues such as metaphors, allegories, rhyming, among others, in poetic language.
(Spanish version: https://www.trustedtranslations.com/ahora-google-traduce-poemas-2010-11-01.html)
