Posted on 03/08/2005 6:08:48 PM PST by withteeth
Wondering what the resident techies think of the breakthrough reported here.
There goes my daughter's job. I wonder if it will translate the obscenities she had to learn for her job....
Does not compute.
Error, Will Robinson... Error!
It'll never catch on until you slide the little fish into your ear...
It'll be some time before machines are able to deal with generational slang and human grammatical and spelling errors, not to mention regional dialects, colloquialisms and the like.
I read that when they first tested this thing they arranged a demonstration, and asked for someone to give the an English phrase to translate into Russian. Someone suggested "Out of sight, out of mind.". They fed it in and it spit out the Russian translation. Then someone suggested reversing the process, so they fed the answer, in Russian back into the machine and it translated it into "Blind idiot."
So, when do we get our Universal Translator? According to Trek lore, I thing it will be around 2150.
The test for such a machine is to translate back from the target language into the original language.
Rumor has it that when the 701 started with the English phrase 'out of sight, out of mind' was translated into Russian, then back into English it responded, in typical Russian mind set, with 'invisible insanity"....
I like my version better...
The (oversimplified) problem with machine translation is that a simple Dictionary 2 Ditctionary solution is not sufficient.
Words put into phrases, changes in 'tense', and thus varrying forms of conjugation across languages all come into play. (and as mentioned dialects, slang, and general 'misspellings')
An XML 'language' object database for each known lauguage will eventually be the key I feel.
Even then it would take an immense amount of logic to breakdown one language and build it up into another in realtime.. that is if such xml databases existed. It could be done on YOUR PC, but would be expensive to run a website that offered such a service to any large number of people.
-->Russian-->English
Output: "The wine is excellent but the meat is no good."
IE: You can't just translate 'words', you need to translate meaning which single words are only part. (This could be done through an xml type defintion of each language)
Bable fish anyone?
i could use the french version.
Functionally, might take the form of recursive logic with feedback. Also known as a Neural Network.
From inside out... translate word. But thats not enough, take output, use as input and need to translate words 'meaning' in sentance. Then keep working outward into paragraph if necessary, and finally article.
In that case the 'dictionary' would just be a VERY WELL 'trained' Neural Network (one for each language)
Notice the article uses the word 'tags', too.
Surely they don't mean that "if,then" logic branching was new in computing in 1954. What was so new?
Also, I wonder which of 1st generation languages they were using...
Just learn spanish, like everyone else...
From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
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