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German Translation TEST - Tesla 4680 Battery
Posted by
EEVblog
on 21 Nov, 2022 23:15
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GERMAN VIEWERS PLEASE WATCH & COMMENT BELOW, THANKS.
This a test of a machine learning system that translates videos into other languages. The company that does this has translated the first 5 minutes of my #1340 video of the Tesla 4680 battery as a test so I can ask my native German speaking audience to vote if it's any good or not.
This is NOT just a google CC translation, it's uses their own proprietary machine learning tech and has been human checked.
If people like it then they can use my videos to teach the machine learning algorithm to match my actual voice, and even reanimate my lips for talking head videos. So the final video would use my actual voice in another language.
Notes from the company that did this:
Translation
The video was translated from English into German. Unlike Google Translate, our system does not produce a "one-to-one" translation - e.g. it will attempt to translate phrases, jokes, and idioms in ways that are acceptable to a native German audience. These translations have been Quality Assured by at least one native German speaker.
Vocalization/Dubbing
As I mentioned earlier, because we used one of our "default voices", the vocalizations in this video will not have your vocal characteristics, speech patterns, and cadence. If we end up moving forward together, then we will retrain our AI on your voice which enables our system to produce outputs that do match your specific, high-energy way of talking. This video is mostly so you can feel confident in the translation quality before moving on to next steps.
Lip Reanimation
Here again, this video does not include lip reanimation. If we move forward, our AI can synchronize all the lips in foreign language videos so they are more enjoyable to foreign language audiences. This isn't make or break, but we've found audiences really enjoy lip-synced dubs (what we call "DubSyncs") vs. regular dubs.
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#1 Reply
Posted by
nctnico
on 21 Nov, 2022 23:35
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Why do Germans always get the pitch wrong? A long time ago I watched an action movie with Sylvester Stallone on German television and they had given him a high pitched girly voice.
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#2 Reply
Posted by
Barny
on 22 Nov, 2022 01:09
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Hi
The translation itself is "good" in a its better then google translate way.
But the structure of the sentences is strange.
For example the first sentence has a strange pause in the middle of the sentence and the end of the first sentence got squished together with the following sentence.
I had to listen a second time to get the meaning correct.
And this weird pauses are all over the whole video.
The whole video is monotone like someone reading the text of an sheet for the first time without understanding it.
There are several words where half of the word gets slurred.
And there is this strange glitch 3:34/3:35 which sounds like the speaker had to burp.
And sometimes the technical term gets translated wrong.
For example:
4:10 Bruchzellen -> the english word here is pouch cells (Bruchzelle could translated in broken / cracked cell)
4:43 Pauzellen -> This isn't even a real word.
I have to be fair, I haven't heard the german version of the term pouch cell (here this type of cell get called LiPo - lithium polymer cell).
But "Beutelzelle" would make more sense in an automatic translation.
If I wouldn't have known that this is an automatic translation, I could have sworn, this is translated & spoken from an person out of the former Soviet/eastern block.
The whole translation screams "scam video / 10 incredible hacks video"
(I always thought, there is a guy in Hungary / Poland,.., making good money translating / dubbing this kind of video )
TLDR.: I wouldn't use this service for a serious video. (Most German speaking people watching technical videos are able to understand english good enough.)
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#3 Reply
Posted by
IanB
on 22 Nov, 2022 01:37
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I don't speak German, but I did I don't think I would like to listen to this. Even though it is "German", it doesn't sound German to me. It is a strange, flat, monotone with no expression, lacking the feel of real German speech. You know how non-natives can speak English with perfect enunciation, but they sound wrong? It's like that.
The best comparison I can make is those weird YouTube videos with narration in computer generated spoken English. I just can't listen to them, and I stop them as soon as I hear it is not a real person speaking.
What I would rather do is listen to the original language and read the translated subtitles. That way, at least I can hear the expressiveness of what the speaker is saying in their native language. And the computer generated subtitles are so good these days, that any slight clumsiness or mistranslation is perfectly fine.
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#4 Reply
Posted by
EEVblog
on 22 Nov, 2022 07:03
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TLDR.: I wouldn't use this service for a serious video. (Most German speaking people watching technical videos are able to understand english good enough.)
FYI, they do other langusages as well, German was just a test because my largest non-english audience is German.
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#5 Reply
Posted by
Bicurico
on 22 Nov, 2022 08:13
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Doesn't sound good at all: especially the weird intervals were a German speaker would not pause is the main issue.
I am native German speaking, but I live in Portugal - I am native Portuguese speaking , too. Since I moved out of Germany, where everything on TV is dubbed, I got used to subtitles.
Most of German TV now sounds very weird to me, because that's just not how Germans speak.
Your video manages to sound even worse than that.
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The structure of the sentences is sometimes weird.
But the translation is not bad.
For someone not speaking any English and only German (Lots of them in Germany), the content of the video is fully understandable.
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#7 Reply
Posted by
madires
on 22 Nov, 2022 10:46
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I'm with IanB. Subtitles would be much better than the ML voice, as your vocal personality is completely lost and the ML voice sounds awkward.
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#8 Reply
Posted by
iMo
on 22 Nov, 2022 11:02
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I am not the native German speaker, but I do understand German well..
I watched the video and it sounds good to me on the first glance, perhaps because I do understand the technical topic a bit.
Dave is speaking fast, so it is not easy for the ML/AI to push a bit different language structure into Dave's mouth, imho..
And of course Dave's voice is differently pitched, but otherwise - it works..
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#9 Reply
Posted by
david77
on 22 Nov, 2022 11:34
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I have not watched the video.
But as a native German speaker I absolutely hate all these bad translations, be it videos and subtitles or even the crappy translations you find on ebay auctions. It is all awful and often does not manage to
convey the original meaning of what was said. You often use slang terms or subtle forms of homour. All of that will be lost in translation.
Many younger Germans (maybe <40 years) with resonable english skills don't even watch films or US TV series in the dubbed version anymore.
As German speakers are your biggest non-english viewership does that not imply that a translation is not even necessary? I understand you hope to reach new viewers who are presently excluded from your channel because of the language barrier. Nothing wrong with that.
As long as I can switch the translation off and watch your vids with your own voice it's fine, though.
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#10 Reply
Posted by
Psi
on 22 Nov, 2022 11:35
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I tried really hard, but I just can't understand a word of it.
It's almost like it's in a totally different language.
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#11 Reply
Posted by
mfro
on 22 Nov, 2022 12:11
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Definitely better than any automated translation I've heard before, but I still strongly prefer the original.
The translation transfers most of the content, but emphasis and emotion is almost completely lost.
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#12 Reply
Posted by
paschulke2
on 22 Nov, 2022 12:15
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One word: horrible.
The machine translation itself is ok. It's still bad compared to a "real" translation made by a human because you can immediately recognise it as a translated text (heise.de in Germany is famous for translating articles from Technology Review this way), but it's better than nothing.
The "speaker" is almost unintelligable. Pronunciation, speech melody and speech rhythm are horrible and a parody of german language. I could not stand to listen to it for more than half a minute. Sorry.
Edit: It reminds me of translated US commercials for "wonder car polish" (you get the idea ...) broadcast in german commercial tv after midnight ...
Edit 2: Even the translation is not as good as I thought in the beginning: You talk about the volume of the cells, they translate "volume" into "Lautstärke" (3 min 26 sec), which is "loudness" (and volume too, of course). The correct translation would have been "Volumen". You can't translate a text without understanding it.
The bad thing is that this will be future. Youtube (and eBay, and ...) already translates titles and text - whether you want/need the translation or not.
I am a native German speaker.
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#13 Reply
Posted by
Bud
on 22 Nov, 2022 13:49
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TLDR.: I wouldn't use this service for a serious video. (Most German speaking people watching technical videos are able to understand english good enough.)
FYI, they do other langusages as well, German was just a test because my largest non-english audience is German.
Please ask them to try Chinese
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#14 Reply
Posted by
adeuring
on 22 Nov, 2022 20:48
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Parts of the translation sound usable but there are a number of points where is stopped short or where the German text is just incomprehensible.
1. There are several pauses in the midst of a sentence that led me to a kind "mental parsing errors":
0:46 "neue 4680 [pause] Zelle". Probably the worst location for a pause: "neu" (new) and "4680" are both attributes for "Zelle" (cell); the pause makes it mentally difficult to "tie the words together".
1:27 "2170er [pause] Zelle". Same as above.
1:46 .. 1:52 Here we have a pause from 1:48 to 1:51. The words before the pause do not form a proper sentence and the words after the pause do neither "fit" what came before the pause nor do they form by themselves a proper sentence. In other words: This is incomprehensible.
2:02 "Sie hat die fünffache [pause] Energie". Better understandable for me than the interrupted phrase "4680er [pause] Zelle" but still weird to listen to.
2:25 .. 2:35: The "film quote" was incomprehensible. But that may be due to me not knowing the film...
3:05 "einundzwanzig von siebzig" (back translated: 21 from/of 70). This does not make sense in German. A better translation would be "21 mal 70".
3:10 "sechsundvierzig durch achtzig" (back translated: 46 by 80). That's plainly wrong in German. Again, this should be "46 mal 80".
3:23 "Dass Du etwa die fünffache Lautstärke bekommst". Here the translation guessed the wrong context. "Lautstärke" means "sound volume", which does not make any sense in the context of batteries. The German word "Volumen" would be appropriate.
4:10 "Bruchzellen". Already mentioned by Barny. The word does make any sense in German.
4:58 "tabulares Design". I have no clue what this should mean.
Especially the "mis-translation" volume -> Lautstärke indicates that the system is not very good in finding the proper translation for a given context. Since most of your videos contain a number of quite technical terms, I would expect a considerable number of wrong guesses... Take the English word "probe" as an example: This dictionary page lists a larger number of German words:
https://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/english-german/probe.htmlEven if this list is limited to nouns (tab "Substantive" on that page): How likely is it that the system knows that an oscilloscope probe should be translated to "Tastkopf", whereas a (more generic) measurement probe should be translated to "Messsonde".
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#15 Reply
Posted by
EEVblog
on 23 Nov, 2022 02:11
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One of my Patrons has translation feedback for the record:
About the auto-translated German video:
It was said in the comments already: It is fascinating that it is possible at all. And for someone who does not understand the original language, it is for sure better than nothing.
However, the sentence structure and intonation is weird, sentence endings are detected incorrectly. Hard to follow.
Just for fun, let me transcribe what I hear (without knowing the original video), translated back to English:
"Hello, yes, I am again at the whiteboard but. More important is that am I back at the whiteboard in the old little laboratory am. Let us speak about the Tesla battery <unintelligible, I think it left "day" in?>. Which has happened recently. And, of course, all would loose their minds every year about the battery day and all. The announced innovations and such things. And tons of things were announced in that. A lot of people said that it is not so, so exciting. But there were indeed many cool things <unintelligible>. And we will talk about one aspect of it. But there were many other innovations in battery chemistry. And manufacturing technology and. You know, they expect that they will do 25. 0 Dollar for <unintelligible> and a lot of other things. But what I wanted to talk about and what people mostly ask me about, is. New 4680s. Cell that they will indeed produce themselves in their Tesla Giga factories. I will try to explain why they actually went. <In this context "they went" in German sounds more like "they left">. And this new 4680 cell designed. And how they/it <"sie" can be "they" or "she", referring to the cell, which is feminine in German.> in comparison to the former 2180th. And the 1865 and 18-6-50s cells, which they used before. <Unintelligible, sound like "Noof">. Of course Tesla started to become famous. To use. Cylindric cells. And the default 18-6-50s cells. Or 1865, how they call it now, because Allen <"Elon"?> does not do it. Like the additional 0, it is only there as decimal point. Anyway, they started with these. And then with the model. The model 3 something like this. They have then the 2170s. Cell taken and will now take the 4680s cell. They already got the sample end of November. I link it down below if you want to watch it. But here, there are not really many details. I could upload a few diagrams of it. But never mind. They designed it themselves. And will produce it themselves. <"Noof"?> the big three claim they ha <stops like mid-sentence>. For this new cell was that it will have 6x the power. And I encircled that. Because we will talk about this today. And why. It has 6x more power than the former 2170 which they used. It has 5x. The energy and has an additional range of 16% in the battery. And many people ask me that. Why, if it has 5x more energy. Than the former 2170s, why does it only have 16% more range. It is all in marketing linguistics. They say energy not energy density. Density. <In the clip> Has taken me to you. What? I am your density. <End of clip> There is thus a little marketing lingology <something like that, does not exist in German, either> in the game if you have 5x the energy. Everyone sees that. Everyone reports that everyone looses their collective minds. And, well, it's only 16%. Additional range why does it then have 5x the energy, but 16% of the range. Well, it depends on the size of the cells. The 18650 or the 18-6-15s is actually. 18mm diameter and 1865s mm length. This is where the numbers come from. Ignore. The 0 at the end. The 2170s in which the move <?> you guessed it. 21 of 70. Thus a little wider. A little longer. And 4680s is 46. By 80. <In German, "by" normally means "divided by" in this context.> It is simply a longer cell and thicker longer. Thicker is better. Obviously. If you thus take this dimension and <unintelligible, something like Pi and h - or minced meat, ...> and take it to the power of 2. That you get about 5x the loudness. <"Volume" would be "Volumen" here, not "Lautstärke" = "Loudness".> Therefore, 5x the energy should be a little more. Because they announced a new electro-chemistry. And. New materials science and such things. On which they worked. This sounds really cool. So. I have a little more than 5x the energy. But. Ooh. There is thus a huge compromise. If Tesla decides to use. Cylindric cells like these. And they still use. Cylindric cells. Compared with the. What typically is used for most other electrical vehicles. <Unintelligible>. I don't believe that others use cylindric cells. Or, sure, please correct me below. But most use big <unintelligible> cells like these, though. We just have a large apartment. Elements in. <OK, this probably was "flat elements". "Flat" like "apartment". ;-)> We will talk about the physical <more like physics> construction in a minute. Because it is important. But basically. You swap. Power against energy density from cylindric cells like these. You will get a larger energy density. Not much more, but still more. But you do not get the same
"But you do not get the same current output power. This means the same power. You thus swap the energy density with the power. Between both of them. So that you get more power out of them with the big power cells. But a little less energy density. So it is a compromise. But Tesla now wants the best of both worlds with this 4680s cell. They want the energy density and they have. Got a new tabular <?> design. Which enables them to get out 6x the power."
OK, I can kind of guess what you want to say...
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#16 Reply
Posted by
BrianHG
on 23 Nov, 2022 03:47
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Please ask 'The company that does this' to take their 5 minute German version of your video and auto-translate that one to English. If you can get that video, then us English viewers can enjoy a good laugh.
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#17 Reply
Posted by
BrianHG
on 23 Nov, 2022 04:10
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One of my Patrons has translation feedback for the record:
About the auto-translated German video:
I tried the closed captioned Google auto translate back to English and it does read a little different than what you have posted.
It does not get as bad as this video:
https://youtu.be/9NwPDWZKkAk
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14 months pass.. I've not heard anything on 4680 tech until an exhaustive report on 2023-Q4 mentioned it twice just today.
https://youtu.be/BcuAHNiSJT8
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#19 Reply
Posted by
wraper
on 30 Jan, 2024 19:59
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14 months pass.. I've not heard anything on 4680 tech until an exhaustive report on 2023-Q4 mentioned it twice just today.
https://youtu.be/BcuAHNiSJT8
Watching that garbage is absolute waste of time. Knowing CSS, it will be 5 part series of misrepresentation and blabbering about <10 minutes of source material.
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No waste of time here and one more reason the 4680 is doomed. Bad management and Panasonic is backing away as stated in the first segment.
https://youtu.be/zEPRgEi1cgM
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#21 Reply
Posted by
Haenk
on 10 Feb, 2024 11:35
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Stumbled upon this only today.
The speaker is no native speaker, the accent sounds like eastern Europe, with some weird american phrasing.
And a lot of what he says is just weird.
However one might capture the idea, so it is not complete nonsense. However (2) - if you are into the latest battery tech, one would assume you are understanding english good enough for the original video.
Maybe just ask around the (german speaking) viewers, if translated content is wanted. I guess, there is no need for a translation.
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#22 Reply
Posted by
nightfire
on 10 Feb, 2024 12:24
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Most of it has been said already, but here my comment and maybe some additional info.
Basically, I find it interesting and fascinating, that technical progress made it so far that we can have quite easily now some translation of complex technical videoclips that are as additional bonus even mostly lip-synched for a more natural feeling. But still, the technology has to come some way to feel really natural- it has to come some way to achieve this (high) goal.
Some things that annoy me most: The computer tries to match positions and probably lip positions in the sentences, therefore causing the breaks and pauses in the sentences. Here it should make some priority decision to avoid breaks rather than try to lip sync.
Other important points: Whilst pointing out the cell sizes of the batteries, the translated words would indicate a division (46 durch 80) -> 46 divided by 80
Here it would be a multiplication: Correct would be like: 46 MAL 80.
Personal opinion about this: I think it is a fascinating way to translate the videos without subtitles, so audience that is not english-savvy can listen to them easily. I personally would prefer a natural flow of words over correct lip sync, because that is what is more obvious to the viewer.
Also, in this regard, it is really recognizable in the construction of the sentences, that some things are said in phrases that are common in the english/US world, but in europe they would be expressed differently, so in this way they also give off some kind of strange vibe, because simply some things are expressed in a different way in ways of saying.