Every day, Facebook performs some 4.5 billion automatic translations — and as of yesterday, they’re all processed using neural networks. Previously, the social networking site used simpler phrase-based machine translation models, but it’s now switched to the more advanced method. “Creating seamless, highly accurate translation experiences for the 2 billion people who use Facebook is difficult,” explained the company in a blog post. “We need to account for context, slang, typos, abbreviations, and intent simultaneously.” The big difference between the old system and the new one is the attention span. While the phrase-based system translated sentences word by word, or by looking at short phrases, the neural networks consider whole sentences at a time. They do this using a particular sort of machine learning component known as an LSTM or long short-term memory network. The benefits are pretty clear. Compare these two examples from Facebook of a Turkish-to-English translation. Th...
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