I thought the "large digital platform" would be AliExpress (which from experience I know does use MT extensively in seller-buyer communications), but it's actually referring to eBay. My experience with the former is that the MT is far from perfect, and even frequently causes much amusement, but definitely useful.
Shameless plug for my open source neural machine translation project. A Python library and GUI with pre-trained models that packages the files needed for machine translation and makes them usable through a simple interface.<p><a href="https://github.com/argosopentech/argos-translate" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/argosopentech/argos-translate</a>
Machine translation feels like one of the quiet victories of the current crop of machine learning products.<p>It's getting to be within spitting distance of being completely adequate (though not excellent) for translating long-form articles, which is amazing considering where things stood ten years ago.
For low-resource languages, or anything of great linguistic distance, neural MT is still not there. That is to say, you may find some language pairs where it works OK, but there's a huge sea of pairs where all you get is gibberish – and still they publish these systems and let people use them to produce more gibberish which they put on their blogs and spam sites, making the non-English web into a corpus of dissociated press ramblings.<p>Baidu recently added Saami to their system. They manage to make a Wikipedia article about wolverines into one about spreadsheets, depressed buttons and famous chickens: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/m91SbRw" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/m91SbRw</a><p>A rough translation of what Baidu gave:<p>> No one is greater than zero. There are new things for spreadsheet[here Baidu used the English word for some reason] and all the things in it.<p>> English is an active wolf, but the background as wolf indicates that the active button is depressed.<p>> Too many places to install. Sweden was released from 1968 and July 1973. Probably number of times the alarm is to be reapeated within 39 minutes. 2010 is in total 66 chickens, but later a famous chicken and chickens 12th of march 2010, with a total of 54 chickens<p>Apertium's translation is often stilted, but it gets the meaning across: Wolverines are the largest animals in the marten family, etc.
Google Translate isn't half bad at Norwegian→English, so you can even combine them to get a sort of Saami→English:
<a href="https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=no&tl=en&text=Jerven%20(Gulo%20gulo)%20er%20hos%20m%C3%A5rfamilien%20med%20det%20st%C3%B8rste%20dyret.%20De%20andre%20store%20m%C3%A5rdyrene%20er%20Storoter%20og%20havoter.%20Jerven%20finnes%20spredt%20i%20cirkumpolare%20fjell%20og%20h%C3%B8yt%20landskap.%0A%0AP%C3%A5%20engelsk%20er%20det%20%C2%ABjerv%C2%BB%20wolverine%2C%20hvis%20bakgrunnen%20er%20wolvering%20som%20som%20verdien%20det%20betyr%20at%20%C2%ABhan%20oppf%C3%B8rer%20seg%20som%20ulv%C2%BB.%20%0A%0AN%C3%A5%20har%20mange%20land%20fredlyst%20jerven.%20Se%20Bern-konvensjonens%20%C2%ABLista%20II%C2%BB%2C%20som%20ble%20etablert%20av%201982.%20I%20Sverige%20ble%20geatki1968%20fredet%23%3Ai%20s%20og%20S%C3%B8r-Norge%20i%201973.%20Myndighetene%20har%20bestemt%20de%20minste%20tallets%20rovdyr%2C%20som%20skal%20v%C3%A6re%20i%20Norge.%20Jerven%20med%20hensyn%20til%20det%20er%20m%C3%A5lsetting%20at%20de%20skal%20v%C3%A6re%2039%20f%C3%A5%20i%20%C3%A5ret.%20I%202010%20er%20de%20for%20informasjonen%2066%20f%C3%A5%20ciiko%2C%20men%20etter%20jakta%20hvor%20det%20drepte%20ciiko%20og%20ungene%20i%2012%20hi%2C%20s%C3%A5%20var%20de%20v%C3%A5ren%202010%20i%2054%20hi%20unger" rel="nofollow">https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=no&t...</a>.<p>I tried Baidu again now with the same input, just to see what they would give into English, and now it's about old ports, finished volcanos and civic computers:<p><a href="https://fanyi.baidu.com/#sme/en/Geatki%20(Gulo%20gulo)%20lea%20stuorimus%20ealli%20neahtebearra%C5%A1is.%20Ear%C3%A1%20stuora%20neahteeallit%20leat%20Stuora%C4%8Deavrris%20ja%20meara%C4%8Deavrris.%20Geatki%20g%C3%A1vdno%20bie%C4%91gguid%20sirkumpol%C3%A1ra%20v%C3%A1riin%20ja%20alla%20eatnamiin.%0A%0AE%C5%8Bgelasgillii%20lea%20%C2%ABgeatki%C2%BB%20wolverine%2C%20man%20duog%C3%A1%C5%A1%20lea%20wolvering%20mii%20%C3%A1rvvusge%20mearkka%C5%A1a%20ahte%20%C2%ABl%C3%A1htte%20dego%20gumpe%C2%BB.%20%0A%0AD%C3%A1l%20leat%20ollu%20riikkat%20r%C3%A1f%C3%A1iduhtt%C3%A1n%20geatkki.%20Geah%C4%8Da%20Bernkonven%C5%A1uvnna%20%C2%ABListtu%20II%C2%BB%2C%20mii%20%C3%A1sahuvvui%201982%3As.%20Ruo%C5%A7as%20r%C3%A1f%C3%A1idahttojuvvui%20geatki1968%3As%20ja%20Lulli-Norggas%201973%3As.%20Eisev%C3%A1lddit%20leat%20mearridan%20unnimus%20logu%20boraspiriid%2C%20mat%20galget%20leat%20Norggas.%20Geatki%20d%C3%A1fus%20lea%20mihttomearri%20ahte%20galget%20leat%2039%20%C4%8Divgama%20jagis.%202010%3As%20leat%20dihtosis%2066%20%C4%8Divgi%20ciiko%2C%20muhto%20ma%C5%8B%C5%8Bel%20bivddu%20gos%20godde%20ciiko%20ja%20%C4%8Divggaid%2012%20biejus%2C%20de%20ledje%202010%20gi%C4%91a%2054%20biejus%20%C4%8Divggat" rel="nofollow">https://fanyi.baidu.com/#sme/en/Geatki%20(Gulo%20gulo)%20lea...</a>.<p>(but at least "Berners Convention" is slightly close to the input …)<p>It's amazing how low a bar big companies have for publishing ML models that just completely fail in the most absurd and spectacular ways, as if GM said "hey marketing department it looks like people want electric cars now, that seems easy just strap a battery on a chicken and hammer some wheels onto it and call it a day"
I think it's time to give up on machine translation. Let people do it. Maybe try and teach the computers how to do something we can't already do ourselves.