Digital Language Translator

[lujanit]

Does anyone use a digital language translator for use with Thai, especially spoken word?  There seems to be quite a few on the market yet it is quite difficult to get a consensus of good reviews on a particular model.  Normally a blog post will articulate how good a certain translator is yet going to a web-store like Amazon there are lousy reviews.

 

Any youtube videos promoting a certain brand/model is effusive about great the product is (naturally).

 

Any recommendations or otherwise appreciated.  TIA

[KC 71]

This is new,looks quite good


Sent from my iPad using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[KC 71]

Sent from my iPad using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[monkeycu]

The finger works to get the message across, sometimes with nasty results 

[lujanit]

I am sure that Translaty and Mauma enence are pretty much the same, only the form differs slightly.  The same ad blurb is used for both units and the price is similar.

[KC 71]

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[Oxx]

17 hours ago, lujanit said:

it is quite difficult to get a consensus of good reviews on a particular model

 

This is hardly surprising.  They're all terrible.  And I can write that without having ever tried one.

 

If you consider how poorly Google Translate handles Thai/English/Thai, and that's working with the written word where the full spelling of each source word is unambiguously known, then consider how much worse any system would be that also had to include vocal recognition.  Add to that that the system won't have been trained in the voices being used, the end result is going to be execrable.

[lujanit]

1 hour ago, Oxx said:

 

This is hardly surprising.  They're all terrible.  And I can write that without having ever tried one.

 

If you consider how poorly Google Translate handles Thai/English/Thai, and that's working with the written word where the full spelling of each source word is unambiguously known, then consider how much worse any system would be that also had to include vocal recognition.  Add to that that the system won't have been trained in the voices being used, the end result is going to be execrable.

You are right.  This is why I made the request.  My experience with the results of numerous translation apps (Google translate, Microsoft etc etc) are downright nonsense.

 

It would appear that these translator units merely use Google Translate or similar via either wifi or 4G so the results are still laughable.

[KC 71]

The finger works to get the message across, sometimes with nasty results 

Well it seems to work fine in Mandarin,and is designed by the Japanese,not U.S !


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[KC 71]

I am sure that Translaty and Mauma enence are pretty much the same, only the form differs slightly.  The same ad blurb is used for both units and the price is similar.

Japanese Design,not U.S,probably more accurate


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[JTXR]

1 hour ago, lujanit said:

You are right.  This is why I made the request.  My experience with the results of numerous translation apps (Google translate, Microsoft etc etc) are downright nonsense.

It's actually an interesting question.  Google Translate has gotten much much better over the past few years for English/Spanish, English/French and English/Italian (all languages I speak).  But English/Thai still sucks.  Thailand has a large population and a lot of cross-border business and tourism.  I wonder why the digital translators aren't getting much better...

[Oxx]

16 minutes ago, JTXR said:

It's actually an interesting question.  Google Translate has gotten much much better over the past few years for English/Spanish, English/French and English/Italian (all languages I speak).  But English/Thai still sucks.  Thailand has a large population and a lot of cross-border business and tourism.  I wonder why the digital translators aren't getting much better...

 

There was a step change in the quality of Thai-English translation about a year ago when they changed the kind of algorithm used, so things have improved, from "unusable" to "dire".

 

Google Translate is a statistical process (not rules-based), and requires parallel documents in both languages from which to learn.  (It started by using European Union documents which were available in all the official languages of the EU.)  There is a relative dearth of such documents for Thai-English, so it's likely that this language pair will always lag behind - at least until someone comes up with a new approach to machine translation.  (Indeed, many parallel documents are machine-translated to start with, often by Google Translate, so have simply served to consolidate Google Translate's weaknesses.)