Mind blowing capabilities of the modern phone

[Kandinskyesque]

Alas I had to focus on guitar after Brexit put the kibosh on my dream of moving back to Europe.

My siblings and I immediately decided to register ourselves as foreign born Irish citizens as soon as that happened.
My only regret is that I didn't do it when I was younger (my father nagged me about it from my late teens onwards) because it would have allowed my daughter to apply before her kids were born, therefore making them eligible for EU citizenship.

 

[effzee]

This is interesting! It has seemed to me that it's been very hard for a machine to translate from German to other languages. That translations to German works pretty well, but not from German.

I have always thought that it is because you really have to read the whole sentence until you know what it's about. Of course a machine now can read the whole sentence and analyze it, but that's just in recent years.

One of the mistakes was the word "their" where it should have been "her". German: ihre. That kind of mistake really shouldn't happen.

I haven't tried it in a while but now I'm going to see how it translates "Jetzt geht es um die Wurst"

Now it's about the sausage? That's what usually comes out

Still not quite there

 

[middy]

This is interesting! It has seemed to me that it's been very hard for a machine to translate from German to other languages. That translations to German works pretty well, but not from German.

I have always thought that it is because you really have to read the whole sentence until you know what it's about. Of course a machine now can read the whole sentence and analyze it, but that's just in recent years.

Is that why Germans are good engineers? Trying to learn German, I almost have to visualize the logical structure of a sentence sometimes… keep it all in my head like an engineer visualizing a machine, until Fritz finally comes to the bleeding point.

 

[Kandinskyesque]

Is that why Germans are good engineers? Trying to learn German, I almost have to visualize the logical structure of a sentence sometimes… keep it all in my head like an engineer visualizing a machine, until Fritz finally comes to the bleeding point.

My favourite German composite word is Driemannerwein.
It translates as ‘three-man wine’: wine so revolting it takes three men to hold you down while they force it down you.

 

[effzee]

My favourite German composite word is Driemannerwein.
It translates as ‘three-man wine’: wine so revolting it takes three men to hold you down while they force it down you.

I had to search that, never heard it, but now it makes sense, especially because it's Austrian

Dreimännerwein:

In Österreich gebräuchliche Bezeichnung für einen besonders alkoholstarken, kräftigen Wein. Ein Beispiel für eine positive Auslegung ist: Zwei Männer müssen einen dritten halten, ***** dieser nach dem Genuss nicht umfällt. Eine negative Auslegung bei einem Wein minderer Qualität: Ein Mann hält einen zweiten Mann fest und der dritte flößt diesem mit Gewalt den Wein ein. Eine zweite Deutung besagt, dass sich „Dreimännerwein“ vom pfälzischen Idiom „Trammenerwein“ für einen Traminerwein ableitet. Dreimänner ist ein Synonym für die Rebsorten Traminer und Grüner Veltliner.


DeepL:
A term commonly used in Austria for a particularly strong wine with a high alcohol content. An example of a positive interpretation is: two men have to hold a third so that he does not fall over after drinking. A negative interpretation for a wine of inferior quality is: one man holds a second man and the third man forcefully pours the wine into him. A second interpretation says that "Dreimännerwein" derives from the Palatine idiom "Trammenerwein" for a Traminer wine. Dreimänner is a synonym for the grape varieties Traminer and Grüner Veltliner.

 

[effzee]

Is that why Germans are good engineers? Trying to learn German, I almost have to visualize the logical structure of a sentence sometimes… keep it all in my head like an engineer visualizing a machine, until Fritz finally comes to the bleeding point.

I've actually suggested exactly this to German engineers. I mean, even drunks stumbling around the backstreets can express themselves in full, complicated German sentences, and gladly share their ruminations on a broad range of sciences and philosophy. It's intimidating.

The thing about German engineers though, is that they struggle to design things for normal mortals. You often need to be an engineer yourself to figure out how to use their designs. One you get it figured out, it's great and the logic behind it makes perfect sense, but getting to that point can be a struggle.

And I'm taking about braindead products like can openers and flashlights.

 

[imwjl]

PSA. All of Apple, Google and Microsoft have text recognition but quite often I find people with iPhones, iPads and Macs that are up to date do not realize they can lasso text out of photos already taken or from the native camera.

 

[NWinther]

Especially maßnahmen.......

 

[NWinther]

Anyways it mostly has to do with me growing up in Western Denmark close to the sea, we had alot of German tourists, and alot of German TV...plus Danish is a North Germanic language.
Anyways clever as all of these devices are they often make funny mistakes, and some languages that are not inflicted or in other ways different, they cannot even translate!

 

[Blrfl]

We are all basically walking around with powerful computers in our pockets that in most ways surpass the large clunky computer boxes we had on our desks 20 years ago.

This is true, but to a point. The more-amazing things get done in data centers on computers that won't fit in our pockets and the phone's just a convenient conduit to get the input there and show the results when they come back.

Same model as these 40 years ago but with a nicer veneer:

 

[jackinjax]

I imagine translating any language into English, or vice versa, is quite an iffy proposition. There are just so many different dialects that may use the same word differently. Discerning sarcasm, and euphemisms has got to be challenging, not to mention homonyms, and synonyms, etc., that may even have different meanings in different English speaking countries.
I often find translations to be awkward and sometimes incomprehensible, but, I hope AI translators don't improve to the point where it becomes hard to recognize all the spam emails notifying me I've won an iPhone.

 

[drmordo]

Back in the 90s Vernor Vinge predicted that we will reach a "technological singularity" where technology would create "entities with greater-than-human intelligence".

A lot of people interpret this to mean artificial intelligence, which is one way that the singularity could happen.

But what I think about sometimes is "Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent."

Link to Vinge's essay

 

[effzee]

The work that I do needs to be translated into 14 languages. 80-90% is this is done by machine translation, with a human fixing the nuances. The current translation engines have gotten very, very good.

I would wager that we’ll see a viable real-time voice translation in 1-3 years.

Yeah if it's a professional translation service with repeat clients, they'll work with databases for each client to ensure consistency and save time. But the final product always has to be looked over and corrections are almost always necessary no matter how good the output seems at first.

The thing with audio translation is simply accents. My Google pixel phone has live transcription which either works miraculously well or comically bad, depending on the accent of the speaker. The British accents result in the most garbled results, clear speaking Americans produce close to word-for-word perfect transcripts.

 

[Kandinskyesque]

The thing with audio translation is simply accents.

They're designed not to work with Scottish accents to the extent that I'm beginning to think there's a clandestine global technocrat isolationism underway where Scotland is concerned.

I even phoned the Scottish Citizens Advice Bureau last week, the automated answering service was a recorded Scottish person but it still could not understand me when I slowly spoke my postal code into the phone. I eventually gave up.

 

[P Thought]

It's an existential crisis when you come to realize you're an idiom.

 

[Kandinskyesque]

It's an existential crisis when you come to realize you're an idiom.

My wife calls me that regularly.
I think that's what she's saying.
"An idiom wrapped up in an ice hole" or words to that effect.

 

[BigDaddyLH]

It's an existential crisis when you come to realize you're an idiom.

Don't hold your breath, just keep your feet on the floor and your nose to the grindstone.

 

[Ben Harmless]

In my work as a social worker, I was in a situation a couple of years ago where I was in a meeting with the staff of a middle school and a mom who was Spanish speaking. We used an awkward speakerphone interpreter for the direct meeting, but when we were done and the school staff left the room, I wound up having a conversation with the mom via Google Translate (initiated by Mom) and we got more accomplished that way that the entire rest of the meeting - including the agreement that the school was pushing her and her son around and the situation was not actually attributable to the kid creating problems.

The interaction honestly felt almost fluid, because we could translate with enough ease that we could also pick up body language and other nuances. It was a really great moment, and I felt like that technology really saved the day. She ended up with an advocate (me) who wouldn't have been available under any other circumstances. It happened twice more and two of my colleagues went to the meetings. We were ultimately able to get some changes made and the problems stopped. All because of a conversation that wouldn't have happened without my cheap Android phone.

Also, I used it to tune my guitar last night, share a rough mix from the cloud with a band I recorded last weekend, and I talk to my mom on Saturday mornings. Neat gadgets. I'm kind of glad I got to experience the world without them, because I can appreciate what I have.

 

[middy]

My wife calls me that regularly.
I think that's what she's saying.
"An idiom wrapped up in an ice hole" or words to that effect.

You must have misheard, "an enigma wrapped in a mystery". Apparently she thinks you're wonderfully mysterious.

 

[Honga Man]

I have a feeling I don't know half of what my iPhone can do.