Computer program for language, quick and easy?

topic posted Fri, May 26, 2006 - 12:30 PM by  Lana
Share/Save/Bookmark
Advertisement
I am not sure if I am posting this in the right tribe, but is there a software that I can get whereby if I type in, say the word, "Time", or sentance, "What time is it?", that it will tell me how to write and say it in another language?

Thank you so much!
posted by:
Lana
Canada
Advertisement
Advertisement
  • You mean other than? babelfish.altavista.com/

    Not that I'm aware of, other than handhelds made for travelers.
    • Yes, other than Babelfish. I am curious about Hindi language. There are probably programs I can buy that have conversions for ALL languages hey?

      Thanks so much for your reply!

      peace*
      • Automatic translation is a much harder than it appears. When we translate a sentence from one language to another a lot of knowledge about the context of the original and target languages is used. For instance when I translate "Little brothers" from English to Spanish I have to know that "brother" is "hermano" in Spanish and to say "little" I should move the "o" at the end after appending "it", making it "hermanito" and then finally to make that plural I should add an "s". "Little brothers" becomes "Hermanitos."

        Even linguistic science does not have a complete model of how all the human languages in the world map to each other. Sometimes there are things that just dont translate at all. The best computer translation software "learns" these models for a single pair of languages using large bodies of hand-translated text (called a corpus.) A common corpus used are reports by the United Nations which are professionaly translated into many languages. Languages pairs where there does not exist a large body of accurately hand-translated material from which to build a translation model are generally without computer translation at this point.

        Anyway you will be unlikely to find a universal translator. The current state of the art is to have a two-language translation model that is by no means perfect. Give it 20 years and you may get your wish but for the time being if you find any program that can translate Hindi (and I would assume English) somewhat reliably you should consider that a find.

        peace,
        Jason