On January 20, 2017, the China Tourism Research Institute, a research institution directly under the National Tourism Administration, released the report "Salute to Chinese Tourists - Big Data of Chinese Outbound Tourists in 2016". According to the report, China has become the largest source of inbound tourists from Japan, South Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom, Thailand and other countries, with 107 million outbound tourists in 2014, By 2016, this figure had reached 122 million. With the growth of national economic level and consumption capacity, outbound tourism has become the norm of national holiday.
Such a huge outbound tourism market has also driven the demand for intelligent translation products. At present, the mainstream translation products in the market can be basically divided into two categories, one is the intelligent translation machine with physical product form, and the other is the translation app focusing on translation functions. The intelligent translation machine combined with artificial intelligence technology is more professional, more accurate and faster. It is suitable for some business people who frequently participate in foreign-related services; For ordinary users, the frequency of overseas travel is not high, and translation scenarios are closer to daily life. In this case, smart phones combined with translation apps can meet their needs.
Migu Lingxi is an intelligent voice assistant app jointly launched by China Mobile Migu Company and iFLYTEK, among which foreign language intelligent translation (Lingxi translation) is one of its core functions. At present, Migu Lingxi supports five major language translations, including English, French, Japanese, Korean and Spanish, and three translation methods, namely, voice translation, text translation and image translation. What kind of translation experience can this free Migu Lingxi App bring to users? Now let's get to know~
Text translation
Open the Migu Lingxi App, you can see the translation portal in the upper left corner, and click to enter. Migu Lingxi's translation interface is very simple. There are three buttons on the bottom bar, representing three different translation methods: text translation, voice translation and photo translation.
Text translation is the main translation function of most translation apps at present. In the field of translation services, Google dominates both algorithms and supported languages. Migu Lingxi supports five major languages, namely English, Japanese, Korean, French and Spanish, covering important translation languages commonly used by users. In the actual measurement, we selected two excerpts of scientific and technological literature, and used Lingxi Translation and Google Translation to translate large sections of the same English and Japanese content. Because the article is highly professional and contains many terms, it should be said that it is difficult to translate.
English to Chinese
Japanese to Chinese
From the results, whether it is Migu Lingxi or Google Translate, the translation speed is very fast. Although the translation results of the two are different, they can basically give accurate translations, which can be said to be a win-win situation. Migu Lingxi's translation accuracy is very high, The translation of keywords such as "overclocking", "backplane", "neural engine", "neural processing unit" and so on is in place. In the test, Migu Lingxi was able to cope with some highly professional industry terms and special words, which shows that Migu Lingxi has a huge vocabulary reserve. In addition to daily life and work terms, it can also play a role in reading scenes in specific professional fields.
Although Google has always been a leader in the field of translation, as far as Chinese translation is concerned, because Chinese people have a deeper understanding and research on Chinese free translation, the advantages of localization will give domestic translation products more advantages in Chinese English translation. There is no need to say more about simple daily life terms. Here, we choose the lines from Su Shi's "Water Melody: When Is the Moon?" to test the Chinese English translation.
Chinese to English (translation of ancient poems)
From the translation results, although Google Translate is powerful, it only translates according to the superficial meaning of the poem. Especially, the last sentence "This ancient and difficult thing" is translated into "this incident and difficulty", which not only does not express the original meaning of the poem, but also has language sickness; On the contrary, Migu Lingxi translated poems according to free translation, translating "Nothing is perfect, not even in the old days", The sentence is smooth and expresses the original meaning of the poem completely.
Real time voice translation
Migu Lingxi's voice translation function is specially designed for travelers. It supports real-time translation between five languages and Chinese, basically meeting the translation needs of most domestic travel users. In terms of usage, the user only needs to click the language of speech (two language buttons below the bottom column) to directly carry out the corresponding voice recognition and start translation. After a short pause, there is no need to click again. Migu Lingxi will automatically translate after recognizing the corresponding input voice.
When talking with a foreign friend on a foreign business trip, the other person's words are often blurted out, and normally the other person will not wait for you to finish the translation before saying the next sentence. At this time, if you need to manually click each translation, not only the operation is tedious, but also the content of the translation is incomplete, and the experience effect of this voice translation is very poor. Just because ordinary users have many and complex voice translation scenes abroad, real-time voice translation is more important. For example, when talking with foreign friends at the dinner table, turn on Lingxi Translation in advance, and every conversation can be translated in time. Especially when two people talk alone, the effect of real-time voice translation is better and more remarkable.
Automatic recognition of Chinese English translation
In addition, in the Chinese English translation mode of voice translation, Migu Lingxi supports automatic detection of Chinese and English languages. If the input voice is English, it will be translated into Chinese, and the Chinese voice will also be automatically translated into English, and the translation will be automatically detected in real time. It does not need to switch languages manually, and it can recognize whether the user is speaking Chinese or English. It can be translated into the corresponding language in real time, and it supports dialogue streams in two languages. Compared with ordinary voice input translation, it sounds very intelligent. Is the effect of actual experience equally powerful?
Migu Lingxi
In our actual use, we used the iPhone 7 equipped with Migu Lingxi to talk with foreign friends in Chinese and English. Under the condition of normal speaking speed and clear enunciation, Migu Lingxi's recognition speed and accuracy are excellent. It can basically complete the whole process of automatic language detection+real-time translation in a few seconds, and the translation results are basically consistent with the original meaning. In addition, if translation is carried out in noisy occasions, Migu Lingxi's language recognition may be biased, which may also occur when the two sides talk too fast.
Youdao Translator
In terms of real-time voice translation, Migu Lingxi has obvious advantages over the mainstream translation apps in China. Take Youdao Translation Officer of NetEase as an example. Youdao Translation Officer's voice translation does not support automatic detection of Chinese and English languages, and after each translation, you need to click the Makfeng button again to translate again. Migu Lingxi cannot achieve real-time voice translation like this.
In general, Migu Lingxi's real-time voice translation and automatic language switching functions have exceeded the author's expectations in recognition rate and speed, and are better than most domestic translation apps.
Photo translation
The example picture shows the menu of a foreign restaurant
In addition to the above most common text translation and voice translation, Migu Lingxi is also equipped with the function of photo translation. In photo translation (only English Chinese translation is supported for the time being), the user takes a picture of the text to be translated, smears the part to be translated, and then starts the translation. The author conducted an experiment with the English menu that we often need to use when traveling abroad, and found that the recognition rate and accuracy of the photo translation function were good. Although it was not possible to translate large paragraphs of articles and long sentences, the effect was satisfactory as the improvement and supplement of text translation and voice translation.
The three different forms of translation, namely, text translation for foreign texts, voice translation for foreign dialogues, and photo translation for English announcements, can be said to cover most of the use scenarios of ordinary users when traveling abroad, which is very practical.
summary
In our entire evaluation, Migu Lingxi's translation function is no less accurate than Google Translate. However, due to the different translation systems used by the two (Migu Lingxi uses the neural network translation system NMT of iFLYTEK), the translation results of the two will indeed differ to some extent. Taking the author (Mo Changyou) as an example, if we are in China, most of the translation functions we use on mobile phones are simple text translation. Since the translation speed of each app is very fast, the accuracy of translation determines the final user experience; If it is in foreign countries, the mobile translation app should be voice translation, so the accuracy of speech recognition and translation speed are more important.
The author (Mo Changyou) thinks that Migu Lingxi's translation function is really good, but it is worth emphasizing that this kind of translation app is not enough to replace today's intelligent translation machine, and their user group positioning is also different. Translation apps such as Migu Lingxi are suitable for ordinary travel users, and are sufficient for the translation of many daily sentences; The intelligent translation machine is used for formal occasions and business people with higher professional requirements.
Migu Lingxi, which supports the translation of five foreign languages, is in the forefront of domestic translation apps in terms of text translation, voice translation, translation accuracy and translation speed. In particular, Migu Lingxi's voice translation function, its operability, recognition rate, speed, and even gives you the illusion of using an intelligent translator. The most important thing is that the Migu Lingxi App is free, and you only need a mobile phone as a carrier.
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