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You are a bit naive, eh? Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_translator
Naive in what regard exactly? EDIT: Oh, I see. You think I think I had this idea first and out of nowhere. Wrong.
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It's really unfortunate though because these languages are some of the hardest for someone like myself to navigate through. For instance I can look at "poulet et riz" and figure out its roughing something chicken. But "雞肉和米飯" means nothing to me.
But does "kurczak z kaszą" mean anything?
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Naive in what regard exactly? EDIT: Oh, I see. You think I think I had this idea first and out of nowhere. Wrong.
In the sense that this is an age-old dream of mankind (see Tower of Babel), not an idea someone grabbed away from you before you could create a startup.
My comment was a bit of bittersweet admiration at a very specific success in implementation. Can we just assume that the average person on HN knows wtf a universal translator is, and not every time someone says, "I had this very idea" that they are making accusations that company/person X is stealing the idea away? Christ. Not a single word was spoken that this idea was "stolen" or "grabbed away". Nor were words employed signifying that "I thought of this first and completely independently".
I was saying it looks like it's too late to be the person who gets to be first to demonstrate it. And by "very idea" I meant, quite specifically, how cool it would be to be able to translate my voice into another language in near-real-time. And by "Rats", I meant "Oh snap, looks like others have been working on doing that same thing and impressively pulled the damn thing off."
If you spent a moment looking at my comment history, you'd see I am usually quite clear in stating what I mean directly. Had I meant to imply an idea was "grabbed away from [me] before I could create a startup", I'd have used those exact words. Instead, I said that I'd had this very idea years ago and only recently thought about how the tech might be there today to make it happen, and maybe make for an interesting startup. I didn't even try to imply it would be my startup.
Nonetheless, point taken. I'll ensure I more specifically couch any future statements about having ideas with the qualifier that I am, in fact, not implying that I had it first or independently in the whole of human history.
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In the sense that this is an age-old dream of mankind (see Tower of Babel), not an idea someone grabbed away from you before you could create a startup.
You erroneously conclude I think I am the first person to think of this. I do not. I know my sci-fi and biblical and human history (20 years of studying intellectual and cultural history, thank you). I've read about the tower of babel and grew up on wanting universal translators. My comment was a bit of bittersweet admiration at a very specific success in implementation. Can we just assume that the average person on…
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> 上, 神, 紙, 髪, and 加味 are all pronounced かみ. This can be mostly solved by context. There are very few situations in normal speech where you'd hear "kami" and not know if they're talking about 神 (god) or 髪 (hair). Also, it's not particularly hard to code that knowledge. E.g. try かみにいのる (pray to god) and かみのけをきった (cut hair) on Google Translate. It will suggest the correct kanji in both cases. Anyway, I'm not a native Ja…
Thanks for the reply. > This can be mostly solved by context. T Right, as I said. It's not too bad, but it's easier when you can just translate word for word. かみにいのる gives me "pray to bite" on Google translate; as you say, it suggests the right kanji...but that's precisely my point. It needs you to disambiguate for it to be sure. I'm not saying this is an insurmountable problem, I'm contrasting the difficulty. > Ther…
To someone who spent years learning Chinese as a second language, and then made my living for years as a Chinese-English interpreter, that was pretty impressive. The economics of the issue is that a machine interpreter just has to be as good as a human interpreter at the same cost. That's a reachable target with today's computer technology. EVERY time I've heard someone else interpreting English or Chinese into the o…
> That's a broadening experience and an intellectual delight. I disagree. It's only broadening in the additional people it allows you to commune with. Other than that, it's a waste of time. Having to convert between languages (I'm a native speaker of English who lives in Germany) all the time is huge overhead, sort of like if every country had its own system of measurement, except that the overhead is incurred much m…
In 1984, newspeak was all about removing ways to describe things the Party didn't want the public thinking about, so that in several generations of the language nobody would be able to comprehend dissent. And it actually has some real life foundations.
Just think of all the times a foreign language speaker says "I can't accurately represent this in whatever other tongue".
Note, I only know English, and after 6 years of Spanish throughout high school and college I have forgotten every wink of it. You really need to immerse yourself in a language to really dedicate it to memory, and constantly use it. Which is really a ton of overhead, that isn't really necessary, I agree.
To someone who spent years learning Chinese as a second language, and then made my living for years as a Chinese-English interpreter, that was pretty impressive. The economics of the issue is that a machine interpreter just has to be as good as a human interpreter at the same cost. That's a reachable target with today's computer technology. EVERY time I've heard someone else interpreting English or Chinese into the o…
I don't think there will be much of an impact on the interpreter industry until the machine translations are significantly better than human translations. Human translators are so expensive today that they are only used in situations where the translation has to be correct -- diplomacy, courtrooms, books, etc. Until a machine is much better than a human, these use cases won't switch to machine translation (similarly,…
Professional translators and trained interpreters yes.
But thousands of people work solely (or assume the role periodically) as interpreters and translators for many more situations, mainly revolving around business.
Now, signing a business deal will still involve translator and a trained lawyer, but those other everyday cases, including showing a western partner around the Chinese offices, could switch to machine translation.