By Elton Gomes
In an attempt to reduce gender biases in its translation service, Google has started rolling out a feature that provides both feminine and masculine translations for some gender-neutral words, on Google Translate website.
The move comes amid criticism that Google Translate often showed up only masculine names when it converted text to another language. “Over the course of this year, there’s been an effort across Google to promote fairness and reduce bias in machine learning,” James Kuczmarski, Google Translates Product Manager, said in a blog post.
Historically, it has provided only one translation for a query, even if the translation could have either a feminine or masculine form, Kuczmarski said in the post.
Google has lately been on a mission to promote fairness in AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning. This could be seen in its recently introduced initiative to remove gendered pronouns from Gmails Smart Compose feature.
The company says it also has plans with regards to addressing non-binary gender in translations as well as gender bias in other Google products like search auto-complete.
What does Google plan to do?
In the blog post, Kuczmarski said, Now youll get both a feminine and masculine translation for a single wordlike surgeonwhen translating from English into French, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish. Youll also get both translations when translating phrases and sentences from Turkish to English.
So, for instance, if you type o bir doktor in Turkish, Google Translate will now show she is a doctor and he is a doctor as the gender-specific translations. Google
Currently, the gender-specific translations are only available for translating single words from English to languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish. Turkish to English is the only language pair that provides both translations for sentences.
Moreover, the feature currently works only in browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Google said it eventually plans to make the feature available on iOS and Android, and that its also working to bring support for more languages as well.
Google counters gender bias
This isnt the first time Google has taken steps to make their products more gender neutral. In November, Google introduced its Smart Compose tool. Google blocked Smart Compose from suggesting gender-based pronouns like him and her in emails since it was worried that itll guess the wrong gender.
Google decided to make the change after one of its research scientists typed, I am meeting an investor next week, and Smart Compose suggested, Do you want to meet him?
Googles Paul Lambert told Cnet that was the kind of gender bias Google wanted to do away with in its AI, so they eliminated gender predictions from the tool.
Its encouraging to see Google counter gender bias by including non-binary people. With its recent step, Google is sure to win some brownie points, particularly since it came under fire for the way in which it handled sexual harassment cases.
Though a small change, the inclusion of feminine translations is undoubtedly a great first step, and it marks the start of much-required change in the tech sector.
Elton Gomes is a staff writer at Qrius
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