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OK, Computer: AI and Language

7/22/2019

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by Summer Worsley

I recently met a young boy of around five or six years of age who was enamoured with his family’s smart speaker. To him, Alexa was a friend with outstanding dinosaur knowledge on the other end of a digital line, not a disembodied, computer-generated voice.
 
Of the many predictions sci-fi and dystopian fiction made, a fair few have come true. One prediction remains frustratingly elusive for researchers though — artificial intelligence (AI). In this post, we’re going to take a look at why linguistic research and work is at the cornerstone of AI advancements.
 
Alexa, what’s the time?
 
From home devices like Alexa to automated voice-to-text dictation software, voice activation and AI technology are becoming increasingly commonplace in our lives. In Europe, reports suggest that smart speaker sales will hit 23 million in 2019.
 
Whether you’re currently calling out to Alexa, Siri, Cortana, or Google, the rise of AI is reaching you. But these devices have limited capabilities because their spoken language skills lag far behind those of a human speaker. Full AI depends on the ability of machines to “speak” as humans do.
 
Natural language is the goal
 
Artificial intelligence aims to replicate human intelligence and present humanlike capabilities. So if we are going to have machines we can easily communicate with, AI has to crack the natural language barrier. As MIT cognitive science professor Josh Tenenbaum puts it, “There’s no way you can have an AI system that’s humanlike that doesn’t have language at the heart of it.” Language is “one of the most obvious things that set human intelligence apart.”
 
At the moment, AI has yet to fully solve natural language use. Smart assistants can “understand” certain words, phrases, and sentences, and deliver appropriate responses, but cannot comprehend the responses they give and are limited by their literal interpretations of utterances.
 
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
 
Although some of us are less than wowed by Alexa’s ability to set a timer, play a song, or say “42” when we ask her about the meaning of life, there is some impressive tech going on behind the scenes. In the cloud, Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service (AVS) receives and interprets the recording of our voice then sends the information back to Alexa as an audio file so she can reply.
 
NLP (not to be confused with neuro-linguistic programming) is what powers smart assistants like Alexa and Siri, and it’s taken us decades to get to the point we’re at now. NLP, a subdiscipline of computer science, is dedicated, in part, to linguistic interaction between humans and computers. More specifically, training machines to analyse and interpret large amounts of human voice data and respond appropriately.
 
As imaginable, the rules of natural spoken language (many of which are unspoken) are hard for computers to grasp. While a machine is easily capable of collecting, collating, and organising large amounts of data from computational and corpus linguistics, applying the same nuances as human interaction is tricky when it comes to machine-to-human communications. Human sentences also display high levels of ambiguity and are often context-dependent.
 
This is where linguists come in. NLP requires knowledge of the fundamentals of morphology, syntax, semantics, prosody, and more. And, at its core, a linguist’s job is to describe those fundamentals and actual language use to tease out the unspoken rules that dictate how we interact in utterances.
 
While tools such as Google’s Parsey McParseface are becoming increasingly adept at breaking down, and, as the name suggests, parsing sentences, there’s still a lot of work to be done and linguists are in demand at computer science units across the world. Digital tools continue to struggle with those aspects of language, such as prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity, that require real-world knowledge.
 
These same issues spring up in machine translation programs, which are still incapable of matching the skill level of a human who speaks multiple languages fluently.
 
Linguists of the world, learn to code!
 
Tech and retail giants such as Google and Amazon are racing to create NLP solutions that will grant them a hefty slice of the voice-tech pie, an industry which some predict is worth a whopping $49 billion. Meanwhile, more scholarly pursuits are being carried out in research labs around the world and linguists with coding abilities are sought after. Is this the new future for traditional theoretical linguistics? I asked Alexa who said, “sorry, I’m not sure.”
 
One thing is for sure though, AI and voice tech is only going to increase its presence in our lives. While that may seem insidious to some, for others, having a friend on hand to ask about what triceratopses ate, is the norm they will grow up with.
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Summer holiday

7/11/2019

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Dear friends and clients of Witinall Language Services,

The office will be closed from July 12 to July 21 for a short break (while I will be getting rid of my cast and recuperating a little), but please call again after my summer holiday or leave your message and I will get back to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, I wish you a wonderful and 
HAPPY SUMMER 2019!

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Punjabi and Hindi Origin, Usage and Presence in Media

7/11/2019

1 Comment

 
By Archu Dhamija
​
Punjabi and Hindi both are the most recognized languages in the Indian media culture. Punjabi is recognized as the third official language of Canada and is the fourth most spoken language in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, Hindi is the most spoken language in India and constitutes up to 44% of India’s total population as native speakers. One astonishing fact about these two languages is that both Hindi and Punjabi are widely oriented to Hinduism and Sikhism religions. Both these religions have strong roots in the Indian subcontinent region.
 
Hindi and Punjabi language have made striking recognitions in the world and are suffusing at a rate faster rate than 6,497 and 6,490 languages respectively. Let's shine some light on the emergence, usage and the presence of Hindi and Punjabi languages in the media culture of India and the world.
 
The Punjabi Language
 
The word 'Punjabi' has been derived from two Persian words 'Panj' and 'āb' meaning 'Five' and 'Waters'. The world literally translates to the land of five rivers which are Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, Beas and is commonly known worldwide as Punjab. The word 'Punjabi' thus means the language spoken by the people of Punjab.
 
Originally, Punjabi was written in two scripts which are Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi. Originated in the 7th century, today Punjabi is the 10th most spoken language of the world with over 130 million speakers. With changes in time and due to India’s partition in 1947, Punjabi got restricted to the Gurmukhi script in the 21st century.
 
Punjabi's Connection to India and Pakistan
 
Regardless of Punjabi being the most spoken language in Pakistan, it is still not recognized by its constitution as an official language. The reason behind this discontent with the Punjabi language is the rivalry between these two nations. The rivalry between India and Pakistan began on the basis religious affiliations of pre-independent India's population to Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam. This division is most famously known as the 'Divide and Rule Policy' of the British in India.
 
During the partition of India, millions of Muslims migrated to Pakistan which resulted in the formation of a new country, whereas the majority of Sikhs and Hindu's remained in India. Punjabi, as the religious language of Sikhs, thus maintained its official supremacy in India.
 
Punjabi in Indian and World Media Culture
 
The Punjabi literature first originated in the 10th century by the 'Natha' section of Hinduism and was written in verse form. It spread widely amongst the region of Sapt Sindhava which is modern-day Punjab. In recent history from the 17th century on words, Punjabi spread in the Persian-oriented Shahmukhi script and was mostly used by the Muslims saints.
 
In the year 1867, the Punjabi language gained some momentum with the publication of the first Gurmukhi script newspaper 'Akhbaar Sri Darbar Sahib Sri Amritsar Ji'. Following its arrival, manifold newspaper agencies started publishing in Punjabi. Today, an individual can purchase a Punjabi newspaper in Western Countries like Ambedkar Times and Desh Doaba in the USA, Ajit Weekly in Canada and Europe Samachar in the European continent.
 
The Pollywood industry, which is the film-industry of Punjab has also marked its reputation all around the world. Established in early 1920, the Punjabi cinema industry released sound movies  without any videography. Later came notable movies like Jatti, Satluj De Kante and Teri Meri Ek Jindri that gave the industry a rapid boost.
 
In the pop-culture, the Punjabi music industry set a record with hit songs. The song Tunak Tunak Tun by Daler Mehndi got renowned internationally in the year 1998. In the 21st century, with the advent of Punjabi songs in Bollywood movies, the Hindi music industry suffered a setback. Today, a large majority of Bollywood movies feature Punjabi songs and the language itself has become a tough contender to the Hindi language for producing Bollywood music.
 
The Hindi Language
 
Hindi is the third most spoken language with over 450 million speakers worldwide. Along with Punjabi, it is one of the 22 officially spoken languages of India. It has derived from the Vedic Sanskrit language and witnessed a quick growth in the 7th century. The dialect in which the modern Hindi language is spoken is the Khariboli dialect. In the year 1949, the Hindi language in Devnagri script replaced the Arabic Urdu language as the official language of the Republic of India. It was until the year 1958, there was no fixed standard of Hindi grammar in the world which was then set up by the government of India in a report named ‘A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi.’
 
In the recent past and even in the 21st century, the Hindi language has been the reason for communal riots between Hindus and Sikhs and amongst the population of North India and South India. The common languages spoken in South India are Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada whose threat of replacement by the Hindi language often became the major cause behind the riots.
 
The majority of users of Hindi language are native to the Indian sub-continent including the countries India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bengal and Sri Lanka. However, the Hindi language is also spoken in the UAE, UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Guyana, Mauritius, Singapore, Fiji, Suriname, Trinidad, and Tobago. The total number of Hindi speakers outside India is 8 million.
 
Hindi in Indian and World Media Culture
 
Hindi as a form of literature is the most famous literature in India. There are several translations of Hindi literature present in English, Chinese, Japanese and other languages. The Indian Hindi literature can be divided into two categories which are pre-colonist literature and post-colonist literature. The pre-colonist literature consists of epics, folktales, autobiographies, and poems whereas the post-colonist literature is composed of fictional literature, novels, and poems. The most famous Hindi writers that are recognized worldwide are Premchand, Tulsi Das, Kabir Das, and Mahatma Gandhi.
 
Due to the spread of Hindi language and literature in the western culture, Hindi words like namaste, bazaar, guru, mantra, etc. became understandable by the world population. The Oxford Dictionary even gave recognition to the word bazaar as a valid word in the English language. In the 21st century, people started using Hindi language in Latin script and a new language Hinglish (combination of Hindi and English) came into existence.
 
The Bollywood industry of India compromises of Hindi movies and songs. The industry alone produces more than 2,000 movies per year and is the world's largest movie industry. Dadasaheb Phalke is considered as the father of Bollywood who produced the first Hindi Bollywood movie in the year 1913. In the 20th century and the early 21st century, Hindi movies like Sholay, The Guide, Salaam Bombay, Awara, Nayakan, Earth, Lagaan, and Devdas made the Hindi speaking community internationally proud.
 
The usage of Hindi language did not remain restricted to the Indian movie cinema and marked its presence in Hollywood movies like Slumdog Millionaire, Bend It Like Beckham, Big Sick, etc. The famous Indian character 'Raj' from the Western TV show The Big Bang Theory often makes references to the Hindi language.  The world popular Hindi song Jai Ho sung by A.R. Rahman for movie Slumdog Millionaire made groundbreaking achievements in the music industry by winning the Grammy award for the Best Song Written for a Motion Picture in 2010.
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When a sale is not a sale

7/11/2019

1 Comment

 
If you're the owner of an e-commerce site and thinking about offering your products on the German-speaking market, it pays to use familiar terms that people will recognize and subconsciously respond to. 

As you might have noticed if you've ever been to Germany, for instance, many shops on the continent use the word  "sale" instead of the less catchy and much longer "Ausverkauf", "Abverkauf" or Räumungsverkauf" or similar, so with this word there's no need to worry about getting your sales message across in the translation. 

If in doubt, ask a native to help with choosing the correct and meaningful terms rather than giving a machine free rein, or you'll end up with a rather unfortunate mistranslation like the "Verkauf" in the picture below. (It seems that not even the big players are immune to a little creative linguistics!)
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Oh dear, another machine translation no-one bothered to check

7/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Thank you, Summer, for some more great insights – and those hilarious examples of machine translations gone wrong. I thought these were a thing of the past, but no, they’re alive and kicking. And to confirm your observations, here’s one I actually came across this week: 

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Congratulations, first-time users of this technical appliance, on having bought a great product with a leaflet instructing you to put the cart before the horse! (And trying to figure out what’s what.) 
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