The application of artificial intelligence has been a hot topic in the world in recent years. Macao has also caught up with this trend and has developed advanced technological products in the field of machine translation, which has achieved a leading position in the industry, providing an important boost to Macao's role as a commercial and trade co-operation service platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.
What is it that has allowed machine translation in Macau to develop so rapidly?
Translations are in high demand
The development of economic and trade co-operation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries is the key
As a bridge between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, there has always been a demand for Chinese-Portuguese translation services, and in order to support this work, many organisations have been working hard to develop a assisted translation system to provide language services for exchanges and cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries through computer and artificial intelligence.
At the end of 2021, the Natural Language Processing and Sino-Portuguese Machine Translation Laboratory of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Macau, together with the translation team of Alibaba DAMO Academy, participated in the 6th World's Top Machine Translation Evaluation Competition, and won the first place in five out of eight automatic translation quality evaluation tests, surpassing rivals such as technology giants Google and Unbabel. Many of the technologies developed by the team have been put into practical use so far.
"Machine translation has become an important industry in addition to the traditional integrated leisure industry. In order to develop Chinese-Portuguese machine translation, the University of Macau invested in continuous research on machine translation technology as early as 1999, and trained a group of technical talents related to Chinese-Portuguese machine translation for Macao, which also promoted and achieved the vigorous development of the current machine translation industry in Macao, which has reached the international level. Huang Hui, associate professor of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Macau and director of the Laboratory of Natural Language Processing and Chinese-Portuguese Machine Translation at the University of Macau, who led the team, said:
"The Chinese-Portuguese machine translation market has huge potential and broad prospects. At present, the global language service market is about US$70 billion, and the total output value of the Chinese market is more than 190 billion yuan. By the end of 2023, the market size of China's machine translation industry has reached 16.64 billion yuan. ”
A number of papers by the Natural Language Processing and Sino-Portuguese Machine Translation Laboratory (NLP2CT) of the University of Macau (UM) were accepted and presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the International Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2023), which attracted wide attention from the academic community.
He pointed out that large language models and machine translation technology can be applied to many different languages, but the Macao SAR has unique advantages in the field of Chinese-Portuguese machine translation: Macao's official languages are Chinese and Portuguese, and Macao's existing many precious bilingual talents are favorable conditions and important factors for Macao to achieve a more professional level in the field of Chinese-Portuguese machine translation. "Among them, Chinese-Portuguese bilingual data is also an important media resource for exchanges and cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. ”
Support and recognition from the state
To meet the needs of the country and give full play to Macao's strengths
In 2019, the Macao Polytechnic Institute was approved by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China to establish the "Engineering Research Center for Machine Translation and Artificial Intelligence Application Technology of the Ministry of Education", in which the machine translation laboratory of the university is located. It is the first engineering-related research centre in Hong Kong and Macao to be authorized by the Ministry of Education, and the only centre in China with machine translation and artificial intelligence as a priority research project.
Zhang Yunfeng, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Language and Translation of Macao Polytechnic University, said: "This national recognition is a great honor for us and represents the strict quality standards that the Centre must follow. At the same time, it has the added advantage of attracting domestic and foreign resources to participate in research. ”
As an interdisciplinary research center, "the team is made up of people from four fields: linguists in Chinese and Portuguese who are responsible for verifying the accuracy of data and systems, in addition to the field of artificial intelligence and the development and maintenance of products." These colleagues come from higher education institutions in the Macao SAR, Chinese mainland and Portuguese-speaking countries, which means that it is an international alliance brought together by Macau. ”
In addition to academic research, the center is also responsible for the introduction of practical software products. According to the person in charge, the Chinese-Portuguese/Portuguese-Chinese official document translation assistance system has been widely used by many government departments, institutions and banks in Macao, including many Portuguese-speaking countries.
"From data, technical terminology, accuracy checks to special services with a high degree of confidentiality, machine translation systems can be customized. These products have served about 40 institutions in Macao and Portuguese-speaking countries, including phrase translation, document translation and terminology databases. ”
In addition to optimizing the efficiency and accuracy of machine translation, developing a speech recognition system is another challenging task for the center. About 10 years ago, the university developed a product called the "Sino-Portuguese Simultaneous Interpretation System", which uses a combination of neural network technology, multilingual recognition and speech synthesis technology.
Since 2018, the rapid development of the global neural network automatic translation system has enabled the center to optimize the stability, operation speed, transcription efficiency and accuracy of speech recognition and automatic translation provided by the product, and in November 2021, it launched version 2.0 of the "Sino-Portuguese Simultaneous Interpretation System", which has become an advanced Chinese-Portuguese simultaneous recognition and translation system.
Zhang Yunfeng pointed out that according to many tests by international language experts, the university's Chinese-Portuguese neural network automatic translation platform is currently considered one of the most accurate application tools in the world. The Chinese-Portuguese-English simultaneous interpretation and speech recognition system has also established the largest and most accurate Chinese-Portuguese parallel database, including tens of millions of sentences. ”
Machine translation is becoming more prevalent
Language talent is more and more indispensable
As an international city, Macau's translation services have always been in demand, and the advancement of machine translation in Macau, in addition to improving Macao's position on the international stage, industry insiders believe that artificial intelligence or machine translation will not replace professional translation work.
A person in charge of a company engaged in translation business said that the industry also uses or develops its own auxiliary translation systems, and their emergence has greatly facilitated the accuracy of the translation of technical terms or proper nouns.
"Machine translation is an assistive tool that helps professionals perform basic or repetitive tasks, giving us more time and energy to work on more complex or machine-like tasks. In his opinion, more and more translators must know how to apply machine translation and work together "as a team".
Huang Hui of the University of Macau said that although machine translation is a trend, it is not yet possible to accurately translate in some specific fields, which requires professional knowledge and experience. A high-quality translation must be carried out by a professional translator in order to accurately translate the meaning of the sentence.
Zhang Yunfeng of Macao Polytechnic University also stressed that machine translation facilitates the public's access to information in other languages – for example, in Macau, the daily Portuguese news or restaurant menus can be easily translated into Chinese. "But for specialized and highly complex texts such as literature, it is impossible for automated tools to replace humans. ”
The world's leading machine translation technology highlights Macao's role as a platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. It is precisely for this reason that the Macao SAR Government has been vigorously promoting bilingual and multilingual learning in both Chinese and Portuguese, constantly stabilizing and developing the bilingual learning environment in Macao, and actively cultivating more bilingual talents in Macao.
Content and image source
Produced by the Macao Government Information Bureau, excerpted from Revista Macau (Portuguese magazine MACAU). Photo: University of Macau, Macao Polytechnic University
Macao's machine translation has reached the international advanced level. What is the reason?
The application of artificial intelligence has been a hot topic around the world in recent years. Macao is also no stranger to this wave and develops products with state-of-the-art technology in the field of machine translation, occupying a leading position in this field, in order to support the city's role as a service platform for trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries (PSCs).
What allows machine translation in Macau to develop so quickly?
High demand for translation services
The development of economic and trade cooperation between China and PSCs is the key
As a platform between China and the PSCs, Macao is a place with great demand for translation services between the Chinese and Portuguese languages. To support this work, many institutions are engaged in researching machine translation technology and developing auxiliary translation systems, with the aim of putting computers and artificial intelligence at the service of language translation in the exchange and cooperation between China and PSCs.
At the end of 2021, the Natural Language Processing and Chinese-Portuguese Machine Translation (NLP2CT) Laboratory of the University of Macau joined the translation team of the Alibaba Dharma Academy at the 6th Conference on Machine Translation, resulting in the development of a translation quality assessment model, which evaluated eight tests at the conference. having been the best in five tests, it beat rivals such as US tech giant Google and Unbabel. Many of the technologies developed by NLP2CT are already in use at the moment.
"Machine translation has become an important sector, due to the demand from the Macau Government, in addition to the traditional integrated tourism and leisure industry. To develop Chinese-Portuguese machine translation, the University of Macau relied before 1999 on constant research in the field of machine translation technology, training the first qualified technicians related to Chinese-Portuguese machine translation for Macao, and also promoting the robust development of machine translation in Macao that now reaches international standards," said the Associate Professor of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Macau and director of NLP2CT, Derek Wong Fai.
"The Chinese-Portuguese machine translation market has a high potential and a very comprehensive outlook. At present, the value of the global language service market has reached around 70 billion US dollars, with the Chinese market accounting for more than 190 billion renminbi. At the end of 2023, China's machine translation market value reached renminbi 16.64 billion.
The academic described that the large language model (LLM) and machine translation technology can be applied to different languages. However, he pointed out that the Macao SAR has unique advantages in the field of Chinese-Portuguese machine translation: Chinese and Portuguese are official languages of Macao, such as the existence of "precious" bilingual qualified staff in the city, are favorable conditions and important factors that contribute to the specialization and professionalism of the Macao SAR in Chinese-Portuguese machine translation. "Chinese-Portuguese bilingual data is also an important intermediary resource for exchange and cooperation between China and PSCs.
Support and recognition of the country
National Need and Advantages of Macao
In 2019, the Ministry of Education authorized the Macao Polytechnic Institute to establish the Engineering Research Centre in Technology Applied to Machine Translation and Artificial Intelligence, in which the machine translation laboratory was included. The research centre is the first engineering-related centre authorised by the Ministry of Education in Hong Kong and Macau. In addition, it is the only one in the country that has machine translation and artificial intelligence as priority areas of research.
"This national recognition is a great honour for us, which means that the centre is obliged to observe strict quality standards," said Zhang Yunfeng, deputy director of the Faculty of Languages and Translation at Macau Polytechnic University. "However, it has the added advantage of being able to recruit national and international resources for research."
The academic described the center's team as interdisciplinary. "The team is made up of qualified staff from four areas, who are linguistic experts in Chinese and Portuguese, responsible for verifying the accuracy of data and systems, artificial intelligence, as well as product development and maintenance. The colleagues come from higher education institutes in Macau, China and Portuguese-speaking countries, that is, it is an international alliance led by Macau," said Zhang Yunfeng.
In addition to academic research, the centre is responsible for the launch of practical software products. The same official said that the Chinese-Portuguese/Portuguese-Chinese Auxiliary Translation System for Official Documents is already being widely used by numerous government departments, institutions from different sectors and banks in Macau, as well as in Portuguese-speaking countries.
"From data, technical terms, accuracy checks to special servers with high confidentiality, the machine translation system is customized. To date, this product has served about 40 institutions in Macao and the PSCs, with a wide range of functions, including sentence translation, document translation and term base, among others."
Along with optimizing the efficiency and accuracy of machine translation, the development of a speech recognition system is another challenging mission for the center. About ten years ago, the organization developed a product called "CH-PT Simultaneous Interpretation System", which simultaneously uses neural network and multilingual recognition and speech synthesis technologies.
Since 2018, there has been a rapid global development of neural machine translation systems. This allowed the centre to optimise the stability, operational speed, transcription efficiency and accuracy of speech recognition and machine translation provided by the product. In November 2021, version 2.0 of the "CH-PT Simultaneous Interpretation System" was released, which is now presented as an advanced Chinese-Portuguese voice recognition and simultaneous interpretation system.
According to several verifications by international linguistic experts, the Chinese-Portuguese neural network machine translation platform of the Macao Polytechnic University is currently considered the most accurate in the world, while its Chinese-Portuguese-English voice recognition and simultaneous interpretation system has "established the largest and most accurate corpus" Chinese-Portuguese, consisting of tens of millions of parallel sentences, Zhang Yunfeng noted.
Most popular machine translation,
Indispensable linguistic frameworks
As an international city, there is always a demand for translation services in Macao. The advancement of machine translation in Macau raises the city's prominence on the international scene, but industry experts believe that artificial intelligence or machine translation will not replace the work of specialized translators.
The head of a translation company said that the sector uses or develops itself translation aid systems, which greatly facilitate the accuracy of the translation of technical terms and proper names.
"Machine translation is an aid tool, it helps professionals in performing basic and repetitive tasks, providing them with more time to dedicate to more complex work that machines cannot yet do." Translators must know how to apply machine translation and work "as a team" with machine translation machines.
Derek Wong Fai from the University of Macau pointed out that machine translation is a trend, but at the moment, machine translation is not able to perform accurate translations in specific areas, which imply professional knowledge and experience. A quality translation has to involve the participation and verification of a human translator, and only then can the meaning of the sentence be translated accurately.
Zhang Yunfeng, from the Macau Polytechnic University, stressed that machine translation facilitates the public's access to information in other languages – in the context of Macau, to news produced in Portuguese or to the menus of Portuguese gastronomy restaurants, for example. However, he stressed that for professional and highly complex translations, such as literature, it is still impossible for automatic tools to replace humans.
The world's most advanced machine translation technology highlights Macao's role as a platform between China and PSCs. It is precisely for this reason that the Macao Special Administrative Region government has been committed to promoting Chinese-Portuguese and multilingual bilingual learning, constantly consolidating and improving the Chinese and Portuguese language learning environment in Macao, and proactively training more Chinese-Portuguese bilingual qualified staff.