Comments on XML Aficionado: Google’s new Tower of Babel

The intriguing thing to me is not that the transla...

2010-02-10T00:56:06.881-05:00

The intriguing thing to me is not that the translations are bad. It is that the translations are, even into and out of other languages, still understandable enough that you can, with a lot of effort, get at least a sense of what the original message was.

The analogy here is the old saw about a man in a bar who glances up and sees, at a table near him, an old geezer and a dog playing chess. Astounded, he walks over to the table just as the dog moves its knight to capture a rook.

"That's amazing," the man says to the geezer. "Your dog must be a genius!"

"Nah, not really," the old man replies, "I still beat him three times out of five."

Given the variables involved, the fact that training can only occur (if it happens at all) over the intervals of conversation, the variations in vocal pitch, tonality and accent, and its rather incredible that the first order translations are even vaguely cogent, let alone that you can manage translations across a language and back and still retain at least a semblance of meaning.

Sometimes I think we get too blase about the miracles that we create.

Funny you should mention Esperanto. I just recentl...

2010-02-09T08:45:18.895-05:00

Funny you should mention Esperanto. I just recently started learning it...

Google's "Babel Fish" translator will in never sol...

2010-02-09T07:16:36.755-05:00

Google's "Babel Fish" translator will in never solve the language problem. Not only does it discriminate against anyone who cannot afford a mobile phone, but against minority language groups as well.

There are 6,800 languages worldwide, not fifty-two !

Moreover, if I met a native in Borneo, and he said to me in Hakka "I've lost my mobile phone" how would I understand him :)

And how many starving Africans can afford a mobile phone !

As English loses its economic power, the answer is not for us to move to Mandarin Chinese, but to Esperanto which puts all speakers on an equal footing.

Have a look at http://www.lernu.net or http://www.esperanto.net