Posted on 12/19/2014 9:45:37 AM PST by goldstategop
In any case, Skype's Translator and its rivals have some way to go before they can match the abilities of a skilled human linguist. You would not want them involved in vital negotiations between world leaders for example. But over the next decade, you can expect to chat to friends whose language you don't share without stopping to flick through a dictionary.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
This is cool and all, but I don’t actually have any friends that don’t speak english. I don’t even imagine how I’d make such a friend. Certainly this could be great for traveling.
There are courses like Rosetta Stone that train one to speak and understand a foreign language naturally. And it gives one an appreciation for foreign cultures and one isn’t dependent on a tiny English speaking elite in a foreign country to understand life there. Of course, some foreign languages are easier to learn than others.
Good luck with it understanding Japanese ambiguity.
For about a half a year now, I’ve been learning French on Duolingo, and best of all, it’s free. I can pretty much read French articles now, but it still is a struggle to understand native speakers.
Might be good for languages related to English but in the east syntax and even the placing of the verb will make it hard to understand an auto translation.
The traditional Korean way of asking if you are thirsty would likely translate as “Is your neck dry”
Oriental languages come through sounding hilarious and broken through an MT translator. Strangled English isn’t the way you want to understand Japanese.
Western languages do acceptably better but if you’re not sure of the meaning, its probably best to hire a human translator for complete accuracy.
The Star Trek universe of instant translation isn’t quite here with us yet.
"My Hovercraft is full of eels!"
Yeah, I’ve translated MANY patent applications from Japanese to English even though the Japanese patent website features a machine translator. It gets about 20% of the shorter sentences right, and all the rest WRONG.
Keep in mind in all Romance languages but Romanian the “h” is silent.
The difficulty is in picking up the pronunciation and once you do, it makes learning it easier. I speak French and find carrying it over to other Romance languages is easier once one understands what its involved.
German is very easy to learn and to speak.
Intuitively I would have thought Dutch would translate to English the easiest, but for some reason I have noticed that automated Italian translations are often close to flawless.
Or Russian slang or Russian acronyms ...
With Asian languages, a human translator is still a must. If you’re involved with business dealings, you can’t rely on MT to produce output that’s anywhere close to what’s being said.
Which is why the UN pays hundreds of thousand of dollars for professional human translators and all Fortune 500 multi-national corporations do the same thing. No computer will understand, process and communicate in the way that human beings do.
The Turing Test hasn’t been broken yet - and may never be.
“Drop your panties, Sir William; I cannot wait until lunchtime!”
Its always slang that trips up the best MT software today. Human speech is complex and full of subtleties and meanings that a computer which is used to literal translation rules, can’t make sense of.
Its more complex than simply building a translation off a probability rule database because if you don’t understand the meaning as well the structure of what a foreign speaker says, its going to inevitably come out wrong even if it is grammatically correct.
OK, I should have been more general. I don’t see how I could make friends with someone without having a common language up front.
BLYAT!
Probably wouldn’t be able to translate Brooklyn slang and accent into real Italian, for example.
(thankfully I don’t speak like that)
Bro was on! Didn’t trip. But the folks was freaking man. And the pilots was laid to the bone, home. So blood hammered out and jammed it. Tightened that bad boy down the runway like a mother. Golly!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.