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To: kattracks
five linguists can create a media stir simply by translating, accurately, Arabic-language news stories on their black Dell computers.

Question for you computer techs. Aren't there computer programs that translate one language for another? When I go to the Intern. Herald to read Greek news, I can specify Greek or English. Or does that mean that both languages have been downloaded at the site?

9 posted on 06/20/2002 4:20:02 AM PDT by Elkiejg
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To: Elkiejg
Aren't there computer programs that translate one language for another?

Yes. The technical description of them is that they "suck", however ;)

Seriously, they're not particularly reliable or accurate, partly because much of the meaning of language is contextual, and computers don't really understand context well. Maybe someday, but not now.

When I go to the Intern. Herald to read Greek news, I can specify Greek or English. Or does that mean that both languages have been downloaded at the site?

Correct. Either they have two different reporters, one writing in English and one in Greek, or, more likely, there's one reporter, and the paper has a translator on staff whose job is to translate the story for the other language editions of the paper. You can read the stories in Greek because the paper pays someone to translate all the stories to Greek, which are then posted as a Greek edition of the paper.

11 posted on 06/20/2002 5:14:00 AM PDT by general_re
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To: Elkiejg
You've not heard of Babblefish, I guess.

Freeper Hal9000 during the Afghan campaign would post some translation using Babelfish and they were quite Funny but you could make sense of them, to some degree.

13 posted on 06/20/2002 11:42:58 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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