Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 19:02:01 -0400
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: It's the Twenty First Century.  Where's My ...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:
>
> Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net> wrote:
>
> > ... automatic language translator?
>
> There's been one at http://babelfish.altavista.com/ for several
> years now.
>
> Of course it's never worked very well.  I don't think a good
> translation is possible without a deep understanding of the full
> meaning of the text, which computers don't yet have.

Actually, I seem to remember an English-French translation program for
the TRS-80 that worked surprisingly well.  Translation programs do not
seem to be particularly interesting to the academic types, for some
reason.  Guess -- too much work for too few papers.

The example I gave is simply the silliest example of bad translation
I've seen in a while.  The link, if you don't want to go through
makeashorterlink.com, is:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.saveurs.sympatico.ca/ency_3/avocat/duo-froid.htm

Given the problems folks have been having with mailreaders, I figured
it'd be a good idea to abbreviate.

Interestingly enough, Babelfish makes exactly the same error.  Do Google
and Babelfish use the same translation engine?

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."