Meta's Omnilingual MT for 1,600 Languages

(ai.meta.com)

42 points | by j0e1 3 days ago ago

8 comments

  • stingraycharles 2 hours ago

    I find that meta’s translations are very poor compared to others, at least for relatively obscure languages, which I figured was relevant considering the article.

    Google Translate is a good default, but LLMs are really good at translations, as they’re better capable at understanding context and providing culturally appropriate translations.

    (I live in Cambodia where they speak Khmer)

    • djsamseng 8 minutes ago

      Hello from Siem Reap, Cambodia! Awesome to see a fellow tech enthusiast from Cambodia.

      I actually found Facebook’s translations pretty good (better than Google Translate for things longer than a sentence). From my understanding of Khmer, Khmer is a bit more verbose and context dependent, hence LLMs in Khmer would be a big help understand those nuances.

      In the inverse case (LLMs generating khmer from English) I heard from locals that it sounds formal and “robotic” which I found quite interesting.

    • smallerize an hour ago

      *they're

      (Sorry I had to)

      • stingraycharles an hour ago

        I could have sworn I edited it! I did notice myself as well, but thanks for the correction.

      • tomrod an hour ago

        *ពួកគេគឺជា

  • psychoslave 2 hours ago

    That's a high count, but still a bit away from "Omni". Usual count is between 4k and 8k depending the source. But the first 1k might be the hardest, certainly.

  • croes an hour ago

    Off topic, since the AI craze MS‘ documentation translation has ridiculous errors like translating try catch keywords to "versuchen" and "fangen" for German pages

    • Tarq0n an hour ago

      Yes their translations offer negative value, which is annoying because at work you can't usually choose your locale settings.

      And the errors are really basic, like translating shortly to short, not the same thing at all!