Gene Wrote:
This is from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland":
"The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then
dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think
about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very
deep well."
This is how it got translated into Spanish:
"El conejo-agujero fue derecho como un túnel para una cierta manera, y
después sumergió repentinamente abajo, tan repentinamente que Alicia
tenía no un momento a pensar de pararse antes de que ella se encontrara
el caerse abajo de un receptor de papel muy profundo."
And this is how it looks when translated back into English:
"Rabbit-I pierce was right like a tunnel for a certain way, and later
it submerged suddenly down, so suddenly that Alicia not a little while
had to think to stop itself before she was falling under a receiver of
very deep paper."
ROFL. And try reading that translation when stoned - there's hidden
sense in those words, dude, it's like they played it backwards or
something! ;)
You can try it yourself at
http://babelfish.altavista.com
GK
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I wrote:
I am hopeful about what Machine Translation may do for the Web. In
another Thread at this site, there has been a discussion going on about
how English is becoming the Franca Linguia of our day and age, and it
has been proposed that the Web is advancing this effect. I am hopeful
that the Machine Language will make this unnecessary. I can see the
day, when BASIC communications on the web will be handled by machines
and people will be able to communicate, REASONABLY WELL, each using
their own lingo. ... But if you think this is an obvious insite - check
out some people familiar with MT (machine translations) and AI
(artificial translations)- they are less optimistic than me.
http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/HLTsurvey/ch8node4.html Survey done late 80s
and and very early 90s pretty pestimistic
About Machine Languages: Machine Translation or Mad Translation
http://www.fortunecity.com/business/reception/19/index.html
Japanese English comparison of machine languages
http://www.fortunecity.com/business/reception/19/mtjapan.htm
Most evaluations arrive at the same conclusion, Human translators are
not in jeopardy of losing their jobs soon. Nor do I think they will
ever lose their jobs in handling communications full of cultural
nicities. Machine language and AI will problably be a long time in
coming to terms with, if they are ever able to, communications that
deal with cultural context, symbolisms, historical context, social
customs, subtle idioms etc. Communications dealing with the arts,
religion, poetry etc are likely never to submit to machine translation.
But in the day to day basic communications I am more hopeful than the
sites above. For one thing I already use 3 or 4 translation sites
concurrently to cruise the web, looking for mineral specimens (my
hobby) among European dealers. Bu using all 3 sites concurrently, I
usually can get the basics of what's being discussed - although I admit
there have been times I wondered if "usefull squash caught between toes
of large Quartz species and solid great sexual relations" is really
what was said...Scotty my Universal Translators is not working, Beam me
up... I am really encouraged now that Altavista has added
Systran to their sites - I think this will be the spurt that moves the
web in the desired direction.
If you want to follow course, here are some helpful links:
3 Good link lists of free translation programs:
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/~martindale/Language.html
http://translate-free.com/
http://rivendel.com/~ric/resources/dictionary.html
The main 3 free Web sites, I know about for translating
multi-languages. Most other sites use these programs (such as Altavista)
http://rivendel.com/~ric/resources/trexad.html is by Transparent Inc.
5 Languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portugese
Also see a good MT summary article about this translation approach at
http://www.transparentlanguage.com/ets/about/mtwhitepaper.htm
Alta Vista uses Systran
http://www.systransoft.com/ which is also a 5
language site. I have had less success with this system than above.
Both of above are limited to 5 languages. Inter-Tran Inc has 26
Languages
http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran? but their format is ackward to
use, and takes some getting use to. Still it expands the number of
languages available.
Finally I just ran into a new site called e-lingo at
http://www.worldblaze.com/company/index.html have to admit, just
found out about it and havn't had time to really evaluate it yet. (When
you come on the site it will offer a free program dealing with Media
stuff - tell it no, unless your really into media- got nothing to do
with translating).
A couple of interesting sites dealing with MT;
The Center for Machine Translation (CMT) at the School of Computer
Science at Carnegie Mellon University:
http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/Resear
ch/CMT-home.html
The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT)
http://www.lim.nl/eamt/
What do you think - Is there a Universal Translator program just around
the corner? If so how long to get around the corner? Will it arrive in
time to save local dialects from the sucking (that with an s) pull of
English??
AND - do you know of any other good sites for MT or AI/Language stuff??
I would be interested.
Finally Let me be the first to wish every one:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
HAPPY NEW CENTURY!!!
HAPPY NEW MILLENIUM!!!!!
2 0 0 0
Hope it is a great one for
you.
Brent