This Microsoft exec's hilarious presentation fail shows why computer translation is so difficult
Some time in 2015, Lee says he was giving a keynote presentation on the power of technology and the potential of artificial intelligence at a conference in San Francisco.
To drive his point home, Lee was having his presentation translated into Mandarin over the stage speakers in real-time via Skype Translate.
Skype Translate, a project born out of Microsoft Research's speech laboratories, was rushed through development by CEO Satya Nadella to show off how Microsoft's bleeding-edge science can be used in real products.
Part of Lee's speech involved a personal story of growing up in a "snowy town" in upper Michigan. He noticed that most of the crowd was enraptured - except for a few native Chinese speakers in the crowd who couldn't stop giggling.
After the presentation, Lee says he asked one of those Chinese speakers the reason for the laughter. It turns out that "snowy town" translates into "Snow White's Town."
Which seems innocent enough, except that it turns out that "Snow White's town" is actually Chinese slang for "a town where a prostitute lives," Lee says.
Whoops.
Lee says it wasn't caught in the profanity filters because there weren't actually any bad words in the phrase. But it's the kind of regional flavor where a direct translation of the words can't bring across the meaning.
In fact, Lee says that this kind of nuance is something that's really difficult for the Skype Translate team. Another good example is the "umms" and "ahhs" that you may include in your speech - Skype Translate is totally capable of wiping them out in translations, but what if those pauses and stops are part of how you're conveying meaning?