Microsoft researchers say they've hit an AI milestone for Chinese-to-English translation

Microsoft announced today that information technology has reached a new milestone in auto translation with a system that tin interpret sentences from news articles from Chinese to English language "with the aforementioned quality and accurateness as a person."

According to the researchers, the organisation reached human being parity on the newstest2017 test, a commonly used examination of news stories developed by industry and academic partners. To ensure the results were accurate, the researchers besides hired exterior bilingual evaluators to check the arrangement'due south translations against references produced by humans.

"Hitting human parity in a automobile translation task is a dream that all of usa have had," said Xuedong Huang, a Microsoft technical fellow who leads the visitor's Spoken communication and Language group. "We just didn't realize nosotros'd be able to hit it so soon." Huang was also in accuse of the research group that recently reached man parity in chat speech recognition.

In gild to hit the translation milestone, Microsoft says that it employed deep neural networks to train its AI systems, rather than the previous approach, statistical car translation. This allowed the system to create translation more akin to what humans would naturally produce. The team as well took advantage of a mix of grooming methods, including dual learning, which translates a sentence from Chinese to English, then dorsum from English to Chinese to ensure it makes sense. Deliberation networks, meanwhile, tasked the system with translating the same judgement over and over to edit and revise its own writing.

The results are based on a unmarried examination set, which includes around ii,000 sentences from a sample of online newspapers, so it'south unclear when or if the organisation may exist gear up to apply in publicly bachelor translation tools. Withal, if yous've used an online translator with Chinese text, y'all'll be familiar with the general wonkiness of the results, so whatever step frontwards is definitely interesting.

Nosotros may earn a committee for purchases using our links. Learn more.

Keeping it affordable

Review: Surface Laptop SE is the new standard for K-8 Windows PCs

Starting at just $250, Microsoft'southward first foray into affordable laptops for the education marketplace is a winner. With a gorgeous design, excellent thermals, and a fantastic typing experience, Microsoft would practise right to sell this directly to consumers besides. Allow'south only promise Intel can make a better CPU.

Exclusivity over saturation

Why Xbox Game Pass rightfully rejects the Spotify model

Spotify is often cited as a doomsday case of what Xbox Game Pass could do to the video game industry. The reality is quite the contrary, Microsoft is rejecting the Spotify model, and rightfully so.

Our top picks for Xbox headsets below $100

All-time deals on Xbox headsets

Our elevation picks for Xbox headsets below $100

Do you fancy a new Xbox One headset? Do you fancy not spending more than $100? Let usa aid! There'southward a big range of solid audio options without breaking your upkeep. And hither are our top picks that we've personally used.