Apple’s Solution to Translating Gendered Languages
Apple has just published a paper, in collaboration with USC, that explores the machine learning methods employed to give users of its iOS18 operating system more choice about gender when it comes to translation.
In iOS18, users can select alternative gender suggestions for a translated word in the native Translate app. Source: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/translate-text-voice-and-conversations-iphd74cb450f/ios
Though the issues tackled in the work (which Apple has announced here) engages, to a certain extent, in current topical debates around definitions of gender, it centers on a far older problem: the fact that 84 out of the 229 known languages in the world use a sex-based gender system.
Surprisingly, the English language falls into the sex-based category, because it assigns masculine or feminine singular pronouns.
By contrast, all Romance languages (including over half a billion Spanish speakers) – and multiple other popular languages, such as Russian – require gender agreement in ways that force translation systems to address sex-assignment in language.
