Translation

[Kerim Friedman]

Well, the USA Today story was poorly written and poorly researched.
However, the information to parse all this is available on the web.
Here is a better story from Wired Magazine:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/translate_pr.html

kerim

On 12/21/06, John McCreery <john.mccreery at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthropologist Moves Beyond Knee-jerk Response! That, my friends, is a
> newsworthy story.
>
> John
>
> On 12/21/06, Kerim Friedman <oxusnet at gmail.com> wrote:
> > First off, a link to the story:
> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/yy9u4n
> >
> > Second, the key phrase that explains what the technology involved is:
> >
> > "Using statistical probability tables built into their software, they
> > sort through likely word combinations to form phrases and full
> > sentences."
> >
> > The use of statistical methods as opposed to rule-based methods has
> > been a major breakthrough in language translation, and has produced
> > significant improvements. The gains are most visible in precisely
> > those languages which are most different from our own and are
> > therefore hardest to model with rules.
> >
> > You can test these technologies yourself using Google's language tools:
> >
> > http://www.google.com/language_tools
> >
> > Arabic and Chinese are listed as "beta" and are based on the same idea
> > as what is used by IBM in the news story.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > kerim
> >
> >
> >
> > On 12/21/06, Robert Lawless <robert.lawless at wichita.edu> wrote:
> > > Today's USA TODAY carries a story headlined "Military tests portable
> > > translators" about the effort to build a machine to do real-time
> > > translation relying on speech recognition software. The story relates,
> > > "This device has been particularly elusive when it comes to translating
> > > between English and complex languages such as arabic and Mandarin Chinese."
> > > The "chief technical officer for IBM Research" is quoted as saying, "You're
> > > talking about (languages) where everything is different – the words, the
> > > structure, even spelling and punctuation."
> > >
> > > Later in the story we learn that translation "is made more difficult by the
> > > great variety of spoken dialects and by large structural differences
> > > between English and arabic and Chinese. Chinese nouns, for instance, have
> > > no gender. In arabic, which does not use capital letters, many proper names
> > > are also common nouns or descriptive phrases."
> > >
> > > Huh? What am I missing here?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> http://www.wordworks.jp/
>