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Programming IT Technology

Speaking in Tongues 276

Posted by michael from the da5id dept.
Desert1 writes "Carnegie Mellon's renowned computer science department has developed a system which allows for conversation between two different languages called Tongues. Currently this has been used between Croatian and English, perhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood." It's been in development for a while.
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Speaking in Tongues More

Speaking in Tongues

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  • ...is handwriting recognition that can handle Doctor's handwriting.
    • I think that one's up there with teleporters and Dyson spheres on the current feasibility scale... Considering it's usually the first letter and a squiggly line for the rest of the word ;-)
      • Well they have demonstrated it, so it may be somewhat more feasable than teleporters and dyson spheres, however they do have quite a few hurdles to jump before this is pratical. But just a thought, if this was adapted from politician to normal folk interpreting a one hour speech could be compressed to less then 10 seconds, something like the following:
        Hello and thank you for coming, I have virtually nothing useful to say, however I would like to point out that you do like me and I have the best ideas. We're going to do alot of things that really don't matter, then try to restrict your freedoms a little more, and, trust us, this really is for your own good. Please vote _______ in the coming election and have a wonderful day.
  • until it can allow h@x0r5 and non-"l33t"s to communicate?

  • Take it to a Pentecostal meeting. (Score:3, Funny)

    by marko123 ( 131635 ) on Sunday August 11, 2002 @10:40PM (#4052602) Homepage
    Then again, you need to understand Holyspiritish before you can write the translator.
    • sense to realize something like that (besides me of course)... but then I believe that if speaking in tongues is of God it must be able to be translated like other languages.
    • Giving x makes x worth more than taking x where x is anything

      Especially where x = "a shit".

    • Just a bit of info "from the horse's mouth" as it were... :)

      It is VERY RARE that glossolalia (speaking/praying in tongues) is comprehensible to any mortal man. Scripture refers to it as "groanings that cannot be uttered", and that when "[your] spirit prays, [your] mind is unfruitful". I take that to mean you don't understand what you're saying, either. I know I don't when I do it.

      However, there are scattered reports of someone delivering a message in tongues, which was followed up by the interpretation (as God commands there to be), but that the original message was comprehensible by one or more strangers who just "happened" to come to that specific church meeting, and heard speech from their foreign, exotic dialect. (a miracle)

      Messages in tongues are, IMO, distinct manifestations of the supernatural from merely "praying" in tongues. Praying in tongues I believe is was is described as being used to "edify your spirit", and is what Paul was referring to when he said "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all." That means he had a extraordinarily vibrant prayer life, one that was immersed in the supernatural. Messages, in contrast, are brought to edify an entire body of believers (and to "wow" the unbelievers), but only when it is accompanied by the interpretation... otherwise, it's just gibberish.

      So, Message + Interpretation functions the same as the spiritual gift of Prophecy, it's just a two-phase form of the same manifestation: a message from God.
      • No, no, no.

        Speaking in tongues like the pentecoastals do is evil. It's the devil that's behind it. We all know what the bible told us about the apostles speaking in tongues. Everyone could understand them. But when the pentecoastals speak in tongues, usually only 0 or 1 person understand it.

        I'm quite certain that they are all evil, and will go to hell when they die. The devil can take many shapes, and will often present himself as someone else (e.g. a preacher, a beautyful woman, or a politician) in order to lure people into his diabolic schemes. Be careful which sect you are going into!

      • It is VERY RARE that glossolalia (speaking/praying in tongues) is comprehensible to any mortal man.

        Read Acts 2. I would suggest that it's not incomprehensible to any mortal man...it's just that we rarely pray in the presence of groups of people from every nation under heaven.
    • FYI: I think "Holyspiritish" is hebrew. Could be wrong though.

  • Next step -- sign language? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blackcoot ( 124938 ) on Sunday August 11, 2002 @10:41PM (#4052605)
    Looks like a fascinating project --- I wonder if their Vision and Robotics boys are working on recognizing sign language which, for all intents and purposes, seems to be a very much more difficult problem (don't believe me --- see how well the facial recognition packages do in production environments :-P). I wonder if this is at the stage where it could be attached to a something like a virtual {insert sign language of your choice here} "translator"... hrm, sounds like a summer project ;-)

    • Re:Next step -- sign language? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This has been done already I believe, at least to a limited extent, and with excellent accuracy. One of my Professors at GaTech, Thad Starner, was involved in a project for this and iirc the project worked with a better than 90+% accuracy.

      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=U TF -8&q=Thad+Starner+Sign+Language

  • Brute Force (Score:2, Interesting)

    by chill ( 34294 )
    I've long wondered why someone doesn't just brute force translation.

    Create a human translated database of damn near EVERYTHING in two languages, like English and Spanish. Then, just do fast lookups.

    Computing power is such that this would be possible.
    • ...except that the exact same sentence can be translated differently, depending on the context.

      Speaker 1: Where are we going?
      Speaker 2: To the bank.

      If you're on a river, the meaning of "bank" is different than if you're in a grocery store.
      • In English it is very uncommon to say "go to the bank" in the river context. The program could have a simple rule to display the most common option, unless a context rule was triggered, such as a mention of a river in the past N sentences, in which case it would also display the alternate/less used version.


      • >..except that the exact same sentence can be translated differently, depending on the context.
        >
        > Speaker 1: Where are we going?
        > Speaker 2: To the bank.

        And in the vein of the submitter who wrote " perhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood."...

        ...regardless of context, if a politician is Speaker #2, you're in deep, deep trouble. :)

        Besides, all political speech boils down to (a) brute force, and (b) the non-politician going to the bank to pay for it.

      • Re:Brute Force (Score:3, Insightful)

        by forgoil ( 104808 )
        And how about words that doesn't even exist in the target language? How about three of them in the same sentence? Would you like to insert a few sentences of explaination, including a few paragraphs of cultural references?

        The only translation softwares that I have seen has either been very faulty (babelfish) or very simple (ordering tickets). Every time I have spoken with a linguist they have given me reason after reason why it would be very hard, if not impossible, to translate from very different languages (English->Swedish is probably possible, even though you would sound like a complete moron after a while, but Japanese->English would be much harder).

        I think that the science and research is important, but I will retain a healthy sceptisism towards any "perfect" systems popping up anytime soon.
        • How about three of them in the same sentence? Would you like to insert a few sentences of explaination, including a few paragraphs of cultural references?

          Yes. Why is this a problem? FWIW, though, if I'm speaking with someone who doesn't speak English well, I try to formulate sentences to use only simple words. Compare...

          Well, barkeep, some of your finest nutty brown ale.

          I buy beer?
      • To the bank.
        "Either to the river's edge or the money lenders."

        That ambiguity exists in English, too...it just takes longer if you make it explicit. The listener should still be able to figure it out; context interpretation is only a problem for machines. I think a human being would have no more problem with my translation that with the original sentence. Although the typical American is going to look at you a bit strangely if you use my translation.

      • Re:Brute Force (Score:2, Interesting)

        by kalidasa ( 577403 )

        I've long wondered why someone doesn't just brute force translation. Create a human translated database of damn near EVERYTHING in two languages, like English and Spanish. Then, just do fast lookups. Computing power is such that this would be possible.

        Because natural languages don't work like that. Natural language translation is an AI problem, it cannot be solved with brute force. Hell, translation by human agents is nearly intractable. This is a problem which has been worked on since the 1960s (if you think Babelfish is bad, you should understand that it's superb compared to the early efforts).

        The syntaxes of natural languages do not map 1:1. For instance, some languages are ergative - they use agents rather than subjects to explain who is doing what. Though it sounds like all you'd have to do is map Tamil::Agent = English::Subject, and restructure the rest of the statement, it doesn't work that way. Vocabularies are the same way: each word has a semantic field which overlaps the semantic fields of other words in the same language, and overlaps the semantic fields in other languages, but almost never is the semantic field of one word in one language the same as that of another word in a second language. Try to translate the word "know" to French or "love" to ancient Greek and you'll understand the problem (French uses a different word depending on whether what you know is a person or an idea, e.g., while in Greek the words eros, philia, and agape all refer to different concepts that English speakers describe as "love").

        It can't be translated the way suggested, either, with "bank" being translated as either "river's edge" or "money storage place" - leaving aside that the second definition is culturally contingent, there could be connotations in either phrase which are distinct from those in the source phrase. There are also problems with ambiguity - natural languages are by definition laden with ambiguities and contingencies, which require the ability to reason to find some corresponding structure in a target language.

        This is a problem which will continue to be worked on for pretty much all our lives. If it's ever solved, HAL won't be far around the corner.

    • I sorta doubt that computing power is such that brute forcing translation is possible for anything but very simple exchanges... Humans can infer context that a machine just *can't*, and likely won't ever be able to. Things like the time of day, current events, the weather, where the exchange is takign place, etc.

      Languages in general are filled with inconsistencies; they evolve so long as new generations learn them. So in the time it would take to create a 'brute force' data base, the language would probably have changed enough to make such data worthless.

      This is ignoring of course, the brute stupidity of wasting computing power on something that obviously doesn't lend itself well to brute force..
    • Create a human translated database of damn near EVERYTHING in two languages, like English and Spanish. Then, just do fast lookups.

      You can't just do a word for word translation, you need some context. The number of combinations is enormous.

  • Only when the program can quickly and seamlessly convert a hitherto unknown language into everyday English will I be satisfied. The differences between Star Trek and reality must continue to dwindle.

    But hey, they could at -least- program Klingon into it.

    • Re:Universal Translator? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It always amazed me that the Star Trek univeral translators could translate a half completed sentence to the same meaning in all languages, even though each language would certainly arrange sentence structures very differently.

  • technical link (Score:4, Informative)

    by madenosine ( 199677 ) on Sunday August 11, 2002 @10:45PM (#4052618)
    if you arent satisfied with the pc magazine summary, you can read this [cmu.edu]

  • Esperanto... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Average ( 648 ) on Sunday August 11, 2002 @10:46PM (#4052623)
    In the pre-computer days, some folks noticed that a neophyte (basic idea, needs dictionary)translation into Esperanto was much more comprehended at the other end than a neophyte translation to the destination language or a neophyte translation by the recipient.

    The reasoning was that the process of translating into a more formal mechanical language clarified and codified ideas.

    Once again, it's the dividing line between human and machine that's the problem. Millions of people train themselves to C or the shells. Fewer to assembly. But it takes some wetware work to push the human/computer boundary closer to the computer.

    Like most programming has a learning curve, usually less than ASM, leaving language translation completely to the machine will be fraught and ambiguous. Good translation requires some push from normal speech, but maybe not so far as mastering every other possible language...
    • I'm majoring in computer linguistics, and currently we're examining different computer translation models; the one you're suggesting is called the interlingua approach.
      The idea is, basically, that you need an "in-betweener" language that can carry all the meaning and connotations of both source and target language. Then you only need translations rules for both sets and then let it run.
      The main drawback is that you always have some loss in both translation steps, which sometimes adds up to quite a difference in meaning. The main advantage is that you can modularize - once you have a working English-to-Interlingua module, you can use Interlingua-to-French, Interlingua-to-German, what have you. For further information, google for interlingua "machine translation"...
  • The team built the system's translator using a technique known as example-based machine translation. Essentially, they created a database that holds a massive list of English phrases and their Croatian equivalents, culling data from bilingual Internet sites and university textbooks. When the engine receives a text phrase in one language, it provides the equivalent text in the other.

    So, basically, it's a lookup function, translating the incomming speech and then comparing in a database... So, while they could have a huge dictionary that could cover most situations, they aren't really doing a 'translation' per say...
    Although, then again, for anyone who has taken language classes, but are not fluent in the second language, isn't that what we do? I know that while I was taking French and Latin, to come up with phrases I would do phrase translations because I was still thinking in English. I wasn't fluent enough to think in those other languages, so I couldn't formulate phrases directly properly.

    I suppose, in essence, this will work as a translator, but it is neither a babel-fish type universal translator nor is it any replacement for fluency.

    Still cool, though. Now, can they get it to run on a Palm?

    -T

    • The prob I have with a dictionary translation is the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts. For instance, how do you say "How are you"? Que Tal? What's up? How's it hanging? Come stai? A dictionary can, literally, translate any of these into any language imagineable, but would the listener understand?
      • If you're gonna try to post a translation of something, at least get the spelling right, or else it screws the WHOLE meaning up.

        Come stai? = Do you eat stai?
        Como estas? = How are you doing?

        I'm not even going to think what stai is, or why someone would eat it.

        Sorry to be an interlingual grammar Nazi.
    • It is probably not just lookup, but lookup plus some kind of pattern matching. If phrase X is close to phrase Y, then a translation of phrase X is probably a good start for translating phrase Y.

  • I don't need one. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 )
    I have a fish in my ear.
  • Oh great, just what we need: a machine/program that makes it easier for us to snow crash. I'd like to play with this a bit, and find out where it's rough edges are--especially running translated output back through, a la the Babelfish.
  • ...perhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood.

    I don't think there's that much problem understanding what politicians say; it's just a lot of times they aren't very "accurate" with what they say.

  • Long way to go (Score:4, Informative)

    by puto ( 533470 ) on Sunday August 11, 2002 @10:57PM (#4052653) Homepage
    I dunno if computer translation is going to be up to par for a long time.

    I speak both Spanish and English. English is native and Spanish is due to 3 years in South America. And my grandparents are from Spain. I did not really know anything until I lived in Colombia and my granny who has Phd in her own language was a pretty harsh mistress. I was 21 years old when I learned. Of course living with a Colombian sysadmin girl for two years was a big help. She liked the Penguin.

    Languages differ too much from location to location. Justlike English in regions in the US. I am from New Orleans and the english changes from neighborhood to neoghborhood.

    Word meanings and expressions might be exactly the same in spelling and sound but mean different things to different people.

    To build these variables into software would be a *HUGE* task.

    I think the best we could hope for is software that does a decent brute translation and then a human does the final edit.

    The problem is one word might be ok to use in Puerto Rico(well they are confused about which language they speak) but socially unacceptable in Colombia. Software cannot know the difference.

    People will always do the translation gig better.

    Puto

    Course my handle is pretty bad in any Latin country.

    • The problem is one word might be ok to use in Puerto Rico(well they are confused about which language they speak) but socially unacceptable in Colombia. Software cannot know the difference.

      Id est - during the Gulf War, American soldiers were cautioned not to use the word "dude" when referring to each other or their Arabic allies... Apparently, in Arabic, 'dude'='worm'.

      However, this could be built into the system, at the expense of efficiency... Translate from English to Arabic... Then translate back for 'proofreading' by the English speaker... When he hears "Hey, worm, thanks a bunch!", he can cancel the translation, and try a new phrase instead.
      This would take a hit to "real-time" communications, however.

      -T

      • However, this could be built into the system, at the expense of efficiency... Translate from English to Arabic... Then translate back for 'proofreading' by the English speaker... When he hears "Hey, worm, thanks a bunch!", he can cancel the translation, and try a new phrase instead.
        This would take a hit to "real-time" communications, however.

        Actually I saw a demo of Tongues at CMU a couple years ago and that's exactly what it did.

        Person A speaks a sentence. The computer displays the phrase, translates it to language B, translates that back to language A, then displays that sentence on the screen. If person A approves, he/she passes the computer to person B, who can then hear the sentence in language B.

        I'm assuming that's why the article says that it takes more than a minute to convey a ten-second sentence.
      • Word meanings and expressions might be exactly the same in spelling and sound but mean different things to different people.

        I agree with both Theaetetus and Puto about the differences in word meanings within the same language or language group. I sometime do some consulting for a multiligual publisher, and he reckons that translastions for a certain audience must be done by a person from that audience. The differences don't become obvious until you do a back translation by a different translator. Some of the mistakes are very funny.

        Besides, I think using machine generated translations as a basis for proofreading by a real translator is just as time consuming and resource intensive as a real translation;

        I think we have to wait for contact with the Vulcans before we can have good real-time translators. At least this is a good start though.

    • Re:Long way to go (Score:3, Interesting)

      by achurch ( 201270 )

      People will always do the translation gig better.

      Oh, absolutely. I'm bilingual as well (Japanese and English), and particularly with Japanese, the language itself is so ambiguous that even native speakers don't always understand each other--you can imagine how difficult that made it to learn the language. ;)

      But I don't think the point of machine translation is necessarily to get a perfect translation out; for that, the machine would have to be able to think like a human, and that would bring up all sorts of difficulties I don't even want to touch. But if the computer can do a good-enough translation, then the humans involved can figure out the rest. For example, another poster suggested the ambiguity of "bank"--a place where you store money vs. the edge of a river--but even if the machine translation got it wrong, the humans involved could figure things out in the end. (You could say "the edge of the river" instead, for example.)

      I'm personally looking forward to progress in machine translation. While there will never be any substitute for actually learning and understanding a foreign language, realtime translation could go a long way toward improving intercultural understanding, and could help stem the loss of languages due to the spread of English and other "core" languages.

    • People will always do the translation gig better.

      Always is a long time. For a while, yes, but not anywhere near forever.

    • Even worse yet (Score:3, Funny)

      by Bastian ( 66383 )
      How are we /ever/ going to get it into a package that is small enough it fit in your ear and watertight enough to let swim around in a bowl of water when you're not using it?
  • I think it is very interesting that it works by using phrases rather than individual words. Most translators in the past have used words and that leaves room for error with idiomatic phrases such as "window shopping" (the french equivalent translates as "window licking").
    Maybe it would be a good idea to put something on the web and let us test it, at least without the speech components.

    • Excellent point... You know, it could be done with phrase tables made by bi-fluent speakers... and if your phrase doesn't match one in the table, it could query you to rephrase, or select the closest match... Then, you wouldn't have to worry about mis-translations.

      -T

  • Translations (Score:2, Funny)

    by bloatboy ( 170414 )
    One of the most useful ones, now with all the scrutiny in the business world will be the translation from any kind of management speak/weaselease into english.

    Corp officer: We are commited to stringent compliance with accounting rules and will not tolerate anything less than the pure truth.

    Translation: We're covering our rears as fast as we can.

    Or to steal one from Dilbert...

    Management: Employees are our most valuable resource.

    Translation: (nothing)
    • > Corp officer: We are commited to stringent compliance with accounting rules and will not tolerate anything less than the pure truth.
      >
      >Translation: We're covering our rears as fast as we can.

      Close, but wrong. That one means "Sell your stock now, because while we're committed to compliance, we haven't achieved it.

      It's what's not said that counts.

      > Or to steal one from Dilbert...
      >
      > Management: Employees are our most valuable resource.
      >
      > Translation: (nothing)

      Again, close but not quite "nothing".

      Translation: "We're laying some of you off. Go to fuckedcompany.com to see if you need to start looting now, or if you can wait a week to start looting."

  • already available in handheld units (Score:5, Informative)

    by js7a ( 579872 ) <jamesNO@SPAMbovik.org> on Sunday August 11, 2002 @10:59PM (#4052663) Homepage Journal
    A St. Petersburg, Russia company called Ectaco has been selling bidirectional handheld speech recognition-based translation systems called Universal Translators [ectaco.com].

    They have them in English-Russian and English-German at present, but apparently plan to add more languages all the time. Their unidirectional models ("UT-103") handle about eight languages currently.

  • Heck, I'd be happy if it would just let me understand my girlfriend.
    • > It's much easier to mod me down than to post an intelligent reply.

      naw, not for me (ok, ok, it is because I have no mod points right now. :) )

      And for those of you like some people I know, that was a joke. or perhaps a rejoke because it is joking on a joke, or maybe I am just tired and rabling on. probably, time to sleep or have caffene, though sleep would be better.

      This post of a higher INTELecual level than most dotslash comments. Personally, I prefer the ALPHA comments.

  • it's better than californication and expecting the world to speak english.
  • Could it translate the ever more confusing EULAs? Then I might know what I have agreed to in the past.

  • Google? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CaseyB ( 1105 ) on Sunday August 11, 2002 @11:07PM (#4052692)
    Why not you use simply translation service of language, which is placed of Google to the order? Surely it is effective and enough for needs for the majority populate flexible. It leaves clearly and comprehensible translation after and a multiplicity of languages.

    • Re:Google? (Score:2, Redundant)

      by gilroy ( 155262 )
      Blockquoth the poster:

      Why not you use simply translation service of language, which is placed of Google to the order? Surely it is effective and enough for needs for the majority populate flexible. It leaves clearly and comprehensible translation after and a multiplicity of languages.

      I wonder what language was this before translation via Google? :)
  • The Toshiba Libretto (referred to in the article as the system this thing runs on) keeps popping up in the coolest places... I remember a story about some being attached to GIs chests and used as mobile information centers.

    For anyone looking to try this: The Libretto lacks a microphone port; to get it to work, you'll need to solder some leads directly to the motherboard. And we're talking SMC chips here. Not for the faint of heart.
  • now a whole new way to misunderstand each other
  • From what I have seen (spoken to?) speech recog pretty much sucks now days, unless you are one of the lucky ones to have one of those 'special voices' that computer speech recog likes. . . .

    As I have stated before in these types of articles, until speech recog can get over 95% or so recog on untrained voices, (or heck, I would like it if it could get 90% recog on my voice /trained/. . . .) these sorts of applications of technology are going to be very limited in scope.

    • ERRR (Score:2)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 )
      Actually, (believe it or not, I didn't read the story), CMU's had a system that sounds exactly like this (speech->computer metarepresentation->speech) that gets 95% accuracy.

      Plus, research speech recognition is well ahead of most consumer-available speech recognition...but also requires custom hardware or more resources.

  • I hear it can also do Hungarian (Score:5, Funny)

    by Copperhead ( 187748 ) <talbrech@speakeasy . n et> on Sunday August 11, 2002 @11:26PM (#4052739) Homepage
    Here are some sound clips...

    "I am looking for the tobacconist." [montypython.net]

    "I need some matches." [montypython.net]

    "How much do I own you?" [montypython.net]

    The entire dictionary can be found here [montypython.net].

  • No matter how you slice it, you'll never be able to make a machine do what a translator does. Why is it that these things are always made by people who aren't multilingual?

    • Re:Why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mariube ( 600067 )
      No matter how you slice it, you'll never be able to make a machine do what a translator does. Why is it that these things are always made by people who aren't multilingual?
      Really? Keep in mind that the human brain is a terrible computer - not designed for linguistics at all. Languages have very precise definitions, and it is possible to make programs that translate any language into logic, see aristotle [utexas.edu] for an example. Of course, the tricky part is to make such a program aware of all local variations. In Norwegian, the direct translation of "foot" can mean anything from "foot" to "below the hips".

      • Re:Why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by kalidasa ( 577403 )

        Languages have very precise definitions, and it is possible to make programs that translate any language into logic, see aristotle for an example.

        No, languages do not have very precise definitions. Take this from a published translator: they do not. The definitions in the dictionary are at best approximations to a particular range of any given word's semantic field; precision with human languages is impossible. Read up on some linguistics before you start posting things about linguistics.

    • Nobody cares if it doesnt turn out to be as good as a human translator, because not everyone can afford to retain a translator on staff. Or a decent butler for that matter.

      Secondly, it matters not a jot if the creators are multilingual, since the problem is not that you don't know 'many' languages, but that you and one other person don't know a language in common. doh!

  • Funny, I've spoken in tongues, and didn't need any computer assistance whatsoever...

    Creation threads, eternal life threads (ala cryo), now tongues...

    Seriously, Michael: do you want to know that your going to heaven when you die?

    Jake

  • Politician-speak (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by guttentag ( 313541 )
    perhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood
    You don't need a new invention to translate politician speak. Simply pipe the text of the politician-speak to the following shell script:

    #! /bin/sh
    echo "All I'm saying is that I keep my options open."

    A "good politician" (good as in "successful," not "responsible") is intentionally vague whenever possible because that allows him to keep his options open. A vague statement that is commonly interpreted one way can later be interpreted a different way. The more details the politician provides, the greater the number of people who will disagree with him.

  • A smaller-than-PDA version of this was used by that goofy roommate on the TV show Undeclared to speak to his Japanese girlfriend a number of months ago.
  • Do you remember what the Guide says? I quote: "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".

    Do we really want Pierre Parisian to be able communicate his exact feelings to Lin Chinese?
  • This is neat and all, but why did they choose croatian? Why not start with something more useful?
    • I suppose that there aren't millions of people in Croatia who can't speak English but would be able to get a much better job if only they could, and there isn't anyone to teach them English, and their language happens to be very difficult to learn for many people which shortens the supply of teachers. And the whole nation isn't bombed out from the war. And by the way, it's usually called "hervastky".
  • ... Hiro Protagonist reference here.


    And this time, I think I spelled his name right, dammit. :)

  • Two exist already...grand juries and impeachment hearings. Obviously, they don't work very well yet. Too much politician involvement in the translation matrix.
  • So long as this stuff stays on the recieving end, this is all a step in the right direction. You don't want to deprive the people you're sending information to of any information. Let them decide whether to use a human or a computer. Sending a computer based translation that you can't understand only increases the chance of offending someone/misrepresenting something.

    Giving it to soldiers in the field so they can "speak" the foreign language is bad. Instead give one-way devices to both sides and let them use those to translate what's told to them. That way if they need a human translator to clarify that's still an option.

    It would be terrible if information started flowing between countries that had been passed through a computer translator first. Please, let me use babelfish to translate that spanish document, don't use it for me (heck, I have friends from south america who can help me clarify it if I need to but that's *no good* without the original spanish)...

    Translation through tounges is a lossy process. Not translating it at least prevents compromising the information. It's all still there...just a wee bit harder to get at.

    Brian
  • [P]erhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood.

    Better yet, how about one that let normal folks talk to politicians and be understood?

  • Dialect output. Soon, you won't have to listen to some Croatian nun discussing free will translated into Bostonian English, you'll be able to listen to a Croatian nun discussing free will translated into Jive.

    This reminds me of a story told to me long ago by a friend of the family. She was of Dutch descent, and the story is about a well bred Englishman who went on a working holiday to Holland. He got work on the docks, and that is where he learned to speak Dutch. The result was that in a refined English accent he spoke obscenity-laden gutter Dutch, apparently unaware that he was doing so.

  • ... involving extremely cunning linguists creating *brand new* languages, completely from scratch, for corporate clients who need to communicate freely and yet still keep something relatively secure.

    A per-transaction language, in other words, with a complete new lexicon for each speaker. Of course, the individuals would have to learn the language quite quickly, so this would also be another service realm in this plan.

    Sort of like Kings of old, who used to use language differences to obfuscate and control various parts of court, only in this case it would be a commercial service, and available to all.

    Something like this would be a good tool in the modern corporate environment, I think.

    Well, I'm off to register Babylon, Inc...

    Oh, D'oh!
  • ... if only everyone learned to speak Klingon.
  • If them damn furreniers ain't smart enuff ta speak American, who gives a damn what they is saying?


    Hell if we need ta hear from 'em we'll jus kick thier asses and make 'em learn ta talk American instead of all that gibberish!

  • Remember this argument in AI circles? A computer that has a big stack of rules that says "When I get sentence X in English, respond with sentence Y in Chinese"? Done. Next.

    But can it beat Kramnik in chess? Ah, now *there* is the question!

  • I love it when somebody invents something that isn't new.

    The first thing you learn about in psycholinguistics is the concept of the pidgin -- a common language which develops between two or more peoples who must interact but share no lingua franca. These simple languages, which sound like baby talk bastardizations of both languages, eventually turn into what's called a creole, such as that sexy patois spoken by fortune tellers on cable.

    All these chaps have done is built their own version, and as the case of esperanto shows, manufactured language is very difficult to gain acceptance and adoption of. They'd have been better off locking a Croat and a Brit in a large office building with big gulps and no marked bathrooms. These guys would develop a pidgin pretty quick.
  • I'd rather have one for lawyers. I don't know anyone that can speak legalease.
  • I will know this tech is mature when they are able to translate a legal document into English.
  • I'm British, and speak only poor schoolboy French. However since hooking up with my half-Russian, half-Serbian girlfriend, I've found that by learning a dozen or so basic words and phrases by rote, then trying to use them conversationally, I've been able to pick up a surprising amount. Serbo-croat was always supposed to be a nightmare to learn, but it's waaay easier than English... for instance, a pnoneme(?) a group of three or four letters will always be pronounced the same way (cf eg "ain" in English.) I'm rather hoping the Babel Fish is never released; by learning the language you start to subconsciously pick up something of the target language's cognitive assumptions, and (in a small way) to "think like" a native speaker. Now /Russian/, there's a tricky language... but we both play chess which is a good middle-man ;)
  • I guess I ought to mention that I have a project
    on SourceForge called Linguaphile. It handles
    about 50 languages currently but only about 4 of
    them are remotely useful. The Spanish and
    Swedish are probably worth playing with. It's
    early days and needs lots of work but it does
    actually do something now. I'm really interested
    in finding people who would like to work on it.
    You can try it online or download it if you have
    Perl. Apologies in advance that there are no
    docs at all since I've had little interest:

    Linguaphile online [sourceforge.net]

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