#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Learn Thai Language >  >  Computer-aided language learning thread

## CaptainNemo

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				Google uses neural networks to translate without transcribing
			
		

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> Daily news 
>      	 				4 April 2017				
> *Google uses neural networks to translate without transcribing*
> 
> I hear youFloresco Images/Getty
> 
>  By Matt Reynolds
> Googles  latest take on machine translation could make it easier for people to  communicate with those speaking a different language, by translating  speech directly into text in a language they understand.
>  Machine translation of speech normally works by first converting it  into text, then translating that into text in another language. But any  error in speech recognition will lead to an error in transcription and a  mistake in the translation.
> ...


https://www.newscientist.com/article...-transcribing/

This is interesting, because technology is approaching that point where language-learning without computers may become a novely like paper books and vinyl. That's a long way off for Thai, Google Translate is still useless at that.

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## Passing Through

> That's a long way off for Thai, Google Translate is still useless at that.


It's actually not too bad now. Here's a sample from an article on Thaipublica:




> อีไอซีมองว่าคณะกรรมการนโยบายการเงินจะยังคงอัตราดอก  เบี้ยนโยบายไว้ที่ 1.5% ถึงแม้อัตราเงินเฟ้อทั่วไปปี 2017 จะเพิ่มขึ้น เนื่องจากอัตราเงินเฟ้อเพิ่มขึ้นจากระดับต่ำและยังอย  ู่ในกรอบเป้าหมายของธนาคารแห่งประเทศไทยที่ 2.5% ± 1.5% และยังต้องคงอัตราดอกเบี้ยอยู่ในระดับต่ำเพื่อสนับสน  ุนการฟื้นตัวของเศรษฐกิจภายในประเทศที่เต็มไปด้วยควา  มเสี่ยงต่อไป





> EIC views the  MPC will maintain its policy rate at 1.5%. Although headline inflation  in 2017 is expected to increase as inflation rises from a low level and  remains within the Bank of Thailand's target of 2.5% ± 1.5% and still need to maintain low interest rates to support the recovery of the domestic economy at risk.


The end is a bit off (hasn't quite captured the widespread sense of risk) but on the whole, that's pretty impressive.

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The forum software _still_ doesn't render Thai properly.

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## CaptainNemo

It's definitely got better, but it's still quite shite. With a lot of languages you have paste back the translation to check it, and tweak it with what you know. I notice that usually when you type "I" you get "chun", but for some phrases you get "pom", so when you have no Thai keyboard, and you are copying and pasting it (a tip for ShrewedPunter and his messaging hobby) you have to write wonky bits of English to assemble what you know makes sense in Thai.
It's a nuisance that they don't allow options for words like if you were typing pinyin or something... I think the user interface needs rethinking a bit to handle non-latin script languages that have different ways of building words.

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## Kollom

yeah it still doesn't work good for less popular languages

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## bnice2me

Quite an interesting article. Hopefully they can figure it out for rare languages to work.

I have learned quite recently of many apps on my iphone where I can take a picture of something in Mandarin and it automatically translates it to English or other languages. You can choose what language you want it to translate it to. I see Thai is not one of the languages on the list. This pic app doesn't work for everything, but it is quite good. I took a pic of my washing machine labelling in Mandarin and now I know what it all means. If I see a menu in Chinese I can take a pic and have it translated into English.

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## Albert Shagnasty2017

I don't reckon it'll be more than five years until you have a "translate to" option before making a phone call.

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## CaptainNemo

Takes the fun out of using languages to chat up women... unless you get the translations wrong on purpose  :Wink:

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## Albert Shagnasty2017

"I meant do you like to flirt, not do you like to squirt"

"Honestly"

 :Smile:

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