"Universal Translator"

[Yoshimasa Tsuji]

Dear Lindsey Taxman,
I advise you not to buy any of those "machine translator" things
if you are familiar with the target language for more than a year.
I say there doesn't exist any software that is cleverer than you.

The version of Universal Translator that I once tested was 3.1b, which
is slightly outdated by now (3.2 wasn't much different). The results
were:
     1. the Russian dictionary was the worst ever. I guessed it had
        less than 4000 entries. (It may be larger by now, but that
        doesn't mean much).
     2. the grammar was also the worst. I remind you that most of
        those "grammar" is not the grammar in the traditional sense
        of the word, but is something like "no two identical words
        can appear one after the other", etc.

You may find the product much better than I have, but there is a
common understanding that this thing (Universal Translator) is not
superior to any of the non-universal translator like Socrat or
Stylus. Stylus is often said to be the best (it is not very cheap),
and at the same time is famous for its immense stupidity.

A first year student of a foreign language may find some
"machine translator" interesting as it gives them a sense
of superiority. But considering that every installation of a
software in Microsoft environment is the major source of trouble,
I would prefer to protect the hitherto happy programs rather than
run a risk of installing another software which is not vitally
important.

I would rather recommend you, as I have done in the past, to install
Ushakov Russian dictionary and the Lingvo6.0 bilingual dictionary.
Once installed, they will show you the accurate meaning of the
words you have highlighted wherever the word is (i.e. in a Web page, etc.)

Those on-line dictionaries are so comfortable to use that reading
Dostoevskij's Complete Works at computer terminals has become a joy
for me. ("translators" of  all kinds will surely drive you mad, instead.)

Lastly, as to the OCR software, I would like to remind you a couple of
points:
   1. As long as the Russian language is concerned, FineReader is still
     the best, with CuneiForm trying very hard to catch up. Both of
     them cost more than US$200 (standard version is not recommended for
     normal use). Neither of them reads important words like "k", "i",
     "v", "s" adequately well. You will be very lucky if ORFO (a
     Russian grammar checker) finds errors of this kind (people
     usually disable automatic grammar checking as the Sound/Noise ratio
     of ORFO is extremely low.)
   2. The accuracy of recognition depends largely on the scanner and its
     device driver. It is often the case that you get a very dark picture
     and cannot do anything with it.

Cheers,
Tsuji

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P.S.
If Ushakov is too much for you, there is the Ozhegov, which you get
free for Lingvo or Orfo (I forgot which). And I know some people
prefer the Oxford bilingual dictionary.
   Incidentally, I have been impressed by the excellent troupe
of linguists working with ABBYY, the firm that sell Lingvo.
The engine they have developed analyzes Russian language paradigms
superbly.