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Article 2393 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Machine Translation (was re: Searle's respons
Message-ID: <1991Dec23.193002.6900@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 24 Dec 91 00:30:01 GMT
References: <45303@mimsy.umd.edu> <1991Dec21.000014.6836@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec23.175207.37941@spss.com>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
Lines: 52
Nntp-Posting-Host: brauer.harvard.edu

In article <1991Dec23.175207.37941@spss.com> 
markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:

>In article <1991Dec21.000014.6836@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

Robert Kohout
>>>       [...]              if someone in this debate sees how
>>>the correctness of Searle's position in any way implies that,
>>>for example, we will never be able to engineer a fully automatic,
>>>high quality machine translator I wish they'd explain it

MZ:
>>Simple.  Correct translation is a matter of finding an approximate synonym;
>>synonymy is a semantic relation; if machines can't compute semantic
>>relations, they can't translate anything.

MR:
>Kind of an amazing conclusion to come to in light of the fact that commercial
>machine translation programs are available today.  They are not very good
>translators (according to a friend who's used one), but they still belie
>Mr. Zeleny's absolute conclusion that machines "can't translate anything."

In the sense of radical translation (look it up in Quine), they can't
translate anything.

MR:
>When one's conclusion is wrong, one looks for the incorrect premise-- in
>this case, that synonymy is a semantic relation.  For humans no doubt it is,
>but for machines a table of synonyms and usage rules will do.

Look up `synonymy' and `semantics', while you're at it.

MR:
>The machine may translate in a way that bears absolutely no relation to
>the way humans do.  But so what?  Mr. Kohout was asking for a machine
>translator, not a robotic mind.  

Translation depends on a mind.  Show me a machine translator, and I'll show
you a text that would stymie it.

`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
: Qu'est-ce qui est bien?  Qu'est-ce qui est laid?         Harvard   :
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: Connais pas! Connais pas!                                 think    :
:                                                             so     :
: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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