Saturday, July 26, 2014

Compare and contrast: Pollution levels

The Air pollution chart for Taipei (a lower number means lower pollution levels):


And here is one for San Francisco:

One for Western Europe, including London and Paris:


And one for LA, known for its smog, notice the higher numbers, even as high as 99:

And Shanghai:

Sunday, July 06, 2014

Google translate fun

Some cool things you can do to check how Google Translate works. For example, does it always translate language to language, or does it first translate into English, and then into the target language?

This can be tested in some interesting ways. If you know Italian and German, check this out:


And if you know Italian and Chinese, check this out:


Notice the mistakes, and what caused them?



I originally got these from here: http://www.quora.com/Google-Translate/Is-it-true-that-when-translating-from-to-any-language-other-than-English-Google-Translate-translates-to-English-in-the-backend-software-before-translating-to-the-language-Ive-chosen