[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][Subject Index][Author Index]

Re: Planet of the New Papers

Mike Taylor wrote-

*cough* *splutter*

Mickey: here, in this public forum, I bet you $100 to $1000 that
translation software is still pants in ten years' time.  (I make that
predication based on the fact that roughly no progress has been made
in the last ten.)  Even if the technical problems were solved, I don't
see anyone in the next ten years building the knowledge base necessary
to translate Janensch's high technical papers from their obsolete
dialect of High German.


Well, perhaps if we quantify "pants".... ;)

How can you say we've made roughly no progress in the last ten years? Ten years ago today, Babel Fish didn't exist, and none of the search engines had automatic translate options in their links. Even once Babel Fish and other translation applications became available, it was generally limited to a few common European languages. Only recently have Russian and Chinese options been available (along with many others), with virtual keyboards to input their characters. And then there's the exponential increase in technology level. Translating archaic technical German might be yet another decade down the road, of course.

Mickey Mortimer