{"id":4903,"date":"2011-10-01T16:40:43","date_gmt":"2011-10-01T08:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=4903"},"modified":"2015-12-06T10:54:22","modified_gmt":"2015-12-06T02:54:22","slug":"google-translate%e2%80%99s-pinyin-converter-now-with-apostrophes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2011\/google-translate%e2%80%99s-pinyin-converter-now-with-apostrophes\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Translate\u2019s Pinyin converter: now with apostrophes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google has taken another major step toward making Google Translate<\/a>‘s Pinyin converter decent. Finally, apostrophes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Not long ago “阿爾巴尼亞然而仁愛蓮藕普洱茶” would have yielded “Āěrbāníyǎ ránér rénài liánǒu pǔěr chá<\/span>.” But now Google produces the correct “Ā’ěrbāníyǎ rán’ér rén’ài lián’ǒu pǔ’ěr chá<\/span>.” (Well, one could debate whether that last one should be pǔ’ěr chá<\/span>, pǔ’ěrchá<\/span>, Pǔ’ěr chá<\/span>, Pǔ’ěr Chá<\/span>, or Pǔ’ěrchá<\/span>. But the apostrophe is undoubtedly correct regardless.)<\/p>\n

Also, the -men<\/em> suffix is now solid with words (e.g., 朋友們 –> péngyoumen and 孩子們 –> háizimen). This is a small thing but nonetheless welcome. <\/p>\n

The most significant remaining fundamental problem is the capitalization and parsing of proper nouns.<\/p>\n

And numbers<\/a> are still wrong, with everything being written separately. For example, “七千九百四十三萬五千六百五十八” should be rendered as “qīqiān jiǔbǎi sìshísān wàn wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā<\/span>.” But Google is still giving this as “qī qiān jiǔ bǎi sì shí sān wàn wǔ qiān liù bǎi wǔ shí bā<\/span>.” <\/p>\n

On the other hand, Google is starting<\/em> to deal with “le”, with it being appended to verbs. This is a relatively tricky thing to get right, so I’m not surprised Google doesn’t have the details down yet. <\/p>\n

So there’s still a lot of work to be done. But at least progress is being made in areas of fundamental importance. I’m heartened by the progress. <\/p>\n

Related posts: <\/p>\n