From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-10-09T13:32:44+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Translation Service


On Oct 8, 2007, at 11:01 PM, Daniel DeLorme wrote:

> John Joyce wrote:
>> Any reliable automated translation would be the Holy Grail of  
>> killer apps. Hasn't happened yet. Human language is far too  
>> implicit and fuzzy for computers.
>
> That reminds me of this article:
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/translate.html
>
> Machine translation might be closer than we think...
>
> Daniel
>
It might be. there is some very very good software out there for  
particular language pairs,  but it still requires human proofreading  
in most cases. But consider the type of writing tends to be a big  
factor. A chemistry paper will generally be a lot easier to translate  
than more conversational, casual writing. Still, the good translation  
software is pretty expensive and is rarely a solution by itself. Word  
for word translation rarely works due to words having multiple  
contextual uses and meanings and rarely having a 1 for 1 analog in  
another language.

As for testing, sure most algorithms are independent of the end  
user's language, but some things such as processing the text may be  
entirely dependent on the language. Input methods for Korean are  
quite different from those for Japanese and Chinese. A grammar or  
spelling checker would be totally lost on Japanese text most of the  
time. It is far too implicit.

But if your application doesn't do those things, it shouldn't matter  
much. Localization is simply setting up the interface to have common  
metaphors used in software in that language. Unfortunately, in some  
cases those things are pretty hard to translate well. In other cases  
they're transliterated.