Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: flanhart@diku.dk (Rene Andersen)
Subject: Re: Machine Translation
Message-ID: <flanhart.780754224@tyr.diku.dk>
Sender: flanhart@tyr.diku.dk
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 12:10:24 GMT
References: <5+2VgIb.padrote@delphi.com>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen
Lines: 33

John <padrote@delphi.com> writes:

>   There is an old joke about machine translation. Some scientists 
>had programmed a computer to translate from English to Russian and 
>vice-versa. They were demonstrating the program to some visiting 
>dignitaries, and entered the phrase "The spirit is willing but the 
>flesh is weak". The computer printed something out in Russian, but 
>since none of the visitors could speak Russian, the scientists 
>decided to enter the Russian output into the computer and have it 
>translate that back into English. When they did this the computer 
>printed "The vodka is a prostitute, but the meat is rotten."

Ahem.

Before we all get carried away and dooms Machine Translation into
oblivion: However funny the story is, it is NOT true. Another popular
version of the double-translation is: "The booze was great, but the
meat was rotten."

I am doing a project on MT myself, and I must admit I don't agree with
the implication of some of these postings on the subject.  It is easy
to ridicule an ambitious project like MT.  But I think it deserves to
be looked at in the rigth spirit.  NOBODY (in their right mind) would
at the present state use MT for biblical translation (like above) or
poetry.  MT is for dull and repetitous text, like computer manuals,
weather reports and so forth.  And in these areas MT certainly has it's 
advantages.

best wishes

Ren'e Andersen


