Google Translate: Swahili… bado kidogo

In the last couple of days Google has added Swahili to the list of languages supported by its Translate service. On one hand I’m very happy to see this addition as I think it has the potential to be a big step forward for development in east Africa. However, from first impressions the service still has a long way to go.

One of the main problems for Google is that Swahili is an agglutinative language – meaning that it puts morphemes (grammatical parts of words) together to form longer words. So it can be difficult for a machine to know where the morphemes (parts of the word carrying meaning) begin and end.

Here are some very simple examples that I tried putting into Google:

Swahili	Morphemes	English	Google Translate
kupika	ku-pika	to cook	cooking
ninapika	ni-na-pika	I am cooking	I cooked
nilipika	ni-li-pika	I cooked	I cooked
nitapika	ni-ta-pika	I will cook	I cooked
sijapika	si-ja-pika	I have not cooked	I cooked
apike	a-pik-e	let him cook	apike
umepika	u-me-pika	you have cooked	has cooked
tutapika	tu-ta-pika	we will cook	we cooked
watakapopika	wa-taka-po-pika	when they will cook	will kakopika
mlipokuwa mnapika	m-li-po-kuwa m-na-pika	when you (pl) were cooking	as they were cooked
ikipikwa nasi	i-ki-pik(w)a na-si	if it is cooked by us	it be boiled us
bado kidogo	bado ki-dogo	not quite yet	still little

To be fair, from what I’ve seen the translations of single words isn’t bad at all. Where it falls down is in the grammar – translating Swahili past, present, future and negative-perfect tenses all to English past!

Going the other way, here a few English examples I tried:

English	Swahili	Google Translate	English back-translation
many people	watu wengi	watu wengi	many people
many trees	miti mingi	miti mingi	many trees
many elephants	tembo wengi	wengi tembo	many elephants
many cars	magari mengi	wengi magari	many cars
I am cooking	ninapika	I am kupikia	“I am” to cook with
I cooked	nilipika	mimi kupikwa	I to be cooked
To be fair, from what I’ve seen the translations of single words isn’t bad at all.	Kwa kweli, kutokana na yale ambayo nimeyaona, utafsiri wa maneno ya pekee siyo mbaya	Kuwa na haki, kutokana na yale I’ve amemwona zote maneno ya wimbo sio mbaya wakati wote.	In truth, coming from what “I’ve” he has seen all words of song not bad all the time

At this point it looks to be a decent dictionary (although with nothing like the depth of the excellent Kamusi Project), and actually does ok with set phrases. However once you get past the set phrases that it knows it seems unable to understand the relatively simple grammar and come up with a meaningful translation.

This is obviously a work in progress, as the “Contribute a better translation” option shows. It would be interesting to know whether Google takes these user contributed translations and tries to work out how the grammars and structures of the languages compare, or whether it simply remembers the set translation in case anyone enters the exact same phrase again. The first would be fascinating to investigate, whereas I fear the second would be like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

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Tanzanian Pastor faces 6 months in prison after refusing to swear on Bible

I’d always wondered how Jesus’ instructions to his followers not to swear on any thing, but to let their “yes be yes, and no be no” applied to swearing on the Bible in court. So I was fascinated to hear this tale of a Tanzanian pastor. It’s told by Kenneth Mwazembe, and is in Swahili, so the quoted text below is my translation:

Pastor of the EAGT [Evangelical Assemblies of God in Tanzania – a large Pentecostal denomination] church on Ichenjezya street in the town of Vwawa, Mbozi District of Mbeya Region, Simon Kitwike (48), yesterday found himself with a 6 month jail sentence for contempt of court after refusing to swear the witness oath because of his religious faith.

The Pastor who had had his house broken into at the end of last year and had some things stolen, arrived at Mbozi District court to give his witness but refused to swear, claiming that it would be wrong.

The District Judge Kajanja Nyasige commanded him to read the section of the Bible which tells him not to swear in court, so the Pastor opened the Bible and read Matthew 5:35, which is where his view comes from.

… Judge Nyasige continued to be patient with the Pastor in order that he have the chance to change his stance, by commanding him to read from the Bible again – from the letter of Paul to the Romans 13:1-5. The witness read this section in front of the court, but when he was asked if he had changed his stance, he replied that he was unable to change his stance from this verse, and insisted that his position was still the same.

Judge Nyasige was compelled to read him the judgement that he was guilty of contempt of court and so was sentenced to go to jail for 6 months, and also that he would be expected to give his testimony in the original case on March 2nd this year. read more

What would you have done were you the judge? The judge was quite right in saying that Paul tells the church in Romans 13:1-5 that they should submit to the government and those in authority, but what happens when the law of the country directly contradicts an instruction of Jesus?

It’s an interesting dilemma that could equally have happened in the UK (and maybe has done in the past?) and highlights the irony of laws that require witnesses to swear on a book which instructs people not to swear on anything but simply let their yes be yes and their no be no.

Google still has a long way to go

Google now has a homepage for its search engine in Swahili: http://www.google.co.tz/

According to this page Google has translated at least 1% of its main site in 152 languages. Not bad, especially considering that these languages are spoken by several billion people worldwide.

According to Wycliffe Bible Translators, the most translated book of all time, the Bible, has been translated into 438 languages. Another 2,016 have at least some of the Bible translated into them.

But that leaves over 2,200 with a need for Bible translation and no project yet started. Many of these languages don’t have a written form, so in order for the Bible, Google or any other text to be translated and written down, an alphabet and writing system must first be developed.

The efforts of Google and others (like Ubuntu, who are currently translating into 189 languages) are to be applauded, and will make their products accessible to the vast majority of people worldwide. But for the Bible, a message from God’s heart to man’s heart, it’s not enough to translate into the 150 or 200 most major languages in the world.

Rather, the message of God’s good news to all nations must be made available to each and every person in the language of their heart, however uneconomical it may seem. No businessman would ever translate his product into a language spoken by 100 people in a village in Papua New Guinea – it just doesn’t make business sense. But then not many shepherds would leave 99 sheep on their own in order to search for the one sheep that wandered astray.

Which is why the Bible will always be the most translated book. God has created each and every person uniquely and loves them just as they are. He will stop at no lengths to draw each person to himself. If we are to reflect God’s character as we join in with his mission to the world, we must make the Bible available to every person in their own heart language.

An out of context visit

Source: WikipediaYesterday, Mark and I were very happy to have some American friends passing through who we know from Tanzania. It was great to see them in England and it really reminded us of Tanzania… Hot weather, Swahili, other friends from the Uganda-Tanzania SIL Branch. It makes us miss many things about Africa. This morning we woke up thinking about Tanzania and I had Mark teach me a few more words in Swahili.. Mti (tree)… Mguu (leg)… Mkono (arm)… Mji (town)… Mlango (door)… Mfereji (trench)… And if you add m- + refu after any of these, you have a ‘long/tall’ nown. Like Mti mrefu = ‘tall tree.’ It did my heart good to connect with Africa this morning, even if through saying simply ‘Mifereji mitano mirefu’ – ‘five long trenches.’