Facebook has been working to improve the way it translates text into posts and comments. Soon, translations on the social network will be much more accurate and natural. This is because the platform has completed a change in the mechanism responsible for making changes from one language to another. Now, Mark Zuckerberg’s network works with artificial intelligence (AI) capable of better understanding the context of the sentences.
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The promise is that the translations will be more coherent, even between languages ​​that do not have the same logic in the organization of words. In addition, the new system is able to learn new expressions automatically.
Automatic Facebook translations are now operated by AI – Photo: Carolina Ochsendorf / dnetc
Old method vs. Artificial intelligence
Before the move, Facebook’s translation system used a phrase-based mechanism. The sentences were » broken » into words and thus basically translated one by one. The result was expressions that made little sense. This process was even worse among languages ​​with very different syntax.
Now, the translations are done by a neural network, a kind of artificial intelligence capable of adapting and learning over time. Instead of translating word for word, the neural network can better understand the context of the sentences. The end result is more coherent translations.
Example of translation from Turkish to English. The bass version uses AI (Photo: Disclosure / Facebook) – Photo: Reproduction / Facebook
The new system is capable of identifying even local expressions, such as slang. In addition, due to its faster adaptation, new words are added in a more natural way.
In this way, Facebook joins Microsoft and Google with a more robust translation system. Both Google Translator and Bing Translator use artificial intelligence for more assertive translations.
