Google dominates in machine translation tests | CNET News.com

Google dominates in machine translation tests | CNET News.com: "Search giant Google's ambitions to make the Web more international got a slight boost from a U.S. government-run test in which its machine translation software beat out competitors from IBM and academia.
Google scored the highest in Arabic-to-English and Chinese-to-English translation tests conducted by the National Institute of Science and Technology. Each test consisted of translating 100 articles from Agence France Presse and the Xinhua News Agency dated from Dec. 1, 2004, to Jan. 24, 2005. The results were posted earlier this month.
Although computerized translations historically have read more like broken English, increased processing power and larger data samples have allowed scientists to improve the accuracy of these systems.
Start-up Language Weaver, for instance, has created software that can translate Al Jazeera broadcasts. Research on the topic is being tackled at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technology Institute and other universities. (Neither Language Weaver nor CMU participated in the recent test.) "