The Heart of the Matter: Machine Translation
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The Heart of the Matter: Machine Translation |
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partners in this venture. The baseline is completed; the product is not. What Good Will Language Translation Do Me? Of course, your need for a language translator depends a lot upon you: if you have multi-national clients; if you travel or want to; if you read documents in more than one language. But, if you do not now travel, nor intend to, or if you do not want to speak or read another language, you may not have much interest. On the other hand, maybe your interest would change if you had a handy language tool. How Often Do International Misunderstandings Occur? A misunderstanding probably occurs every minute. Everyone has a funny story. You probably have received large e-mail messages with the kind of language translation jokes which follow. Hotel signs in:
These are funny maybe because we know the "right" meaning. We may not see the humor if we made comparable blunders in other countries, however. And errors do not necessarily occur where English is the second language. For example, an acquaintance went to England in the countryside and stayed at an isolated inn. Traveling alone in the area for the first time, she felt somewhat non-plused, a little jumpy, and nervous. At the end of the evening, she headed to her room but stopped at the desk. The clerk, with a very straight face, asked her when she wanted to be "knocked up." In the few moments before she figured it out, her first reaction unsettled her completely!! For an American, the meaning could have a sexual slur attached; for an Englishman, the meaning carries nothing but courtesy as a wake-up call the next morning. Perhaps language in large part contributes to a general "ugly tourist" impression when it occurs. Will theExact Word® Prevent These Errors? Of course not. But, theExact Word®'s technology can provide a genuine step ahead of language translation as it exists now. How? English has an unusual characteristic. More than in most other languages, English words have two to five definitions, depending upon how they are used. Other language speakers expect a word to have one definition, not several. Contrarily, English speakers actually expect words to have multiple meanings. English and American humor rests largely upon puns from multiple meanings. Shakespeare, James Joyce, and countless humorists have plumbed the double entendre, the multiple implications, and very funny meanings that English imparts and implies. theExact Word® could provide more accurate translation. But, additionally, theExact Word® could make another significant contribution. Our experience in seminars has shown us that native speakers of languages other than English say that English "finally gains some logic." Instead of the confusion of multiple meanings for one word, theExact Word®'s system helps to clarify which meaning goes in which "place" in a sentence. How Can I Understand Other Languages and Cultures Better? Once peoples of many lands and languages understand that, globally, we do not all look at things the same way, real international exchange can have new meaning. Multi-language speakers refer to an interesting change which occurs while speaking more than one language: "change your language, change your personality." For example, languages often have vocabulary words for an experience that another language does not. For example, the French word, "intime," or Spanish, "simpatico." English does not quite translate those words. They denote a rapport, a bond, a place in a relationship, a "place" reached between two people. Without a word for such a special accomplishment in a friendship, English speakers cannot as easily express, without a particular vocabulary word, the same relationship even if a friendship achieves that kind of bond. theExact Word® can create language experience, even among English speakers, to create the ability to see more than one side of a thought or idea. Seeing ourselves objectively takes effort, even with a common native language. Seeing ourselves objectively, or seeing "realities" which we do not have vocabulary for can be challenging, often close to impossible. In seminars, we have seen how much fun people can have seeing the "other" view. We imagine the same pleasurable ease with future machine translation products that we hope to build. Can theExact Word® Contribute to Machine-Language Translation for Computers, not only Individuals? theExact Word® has written the baseline programming for WordPrint.® We wrote this baseline for the purpose of multiple applications in related areas, including particularly machine translation. We have not yet created new products for machine translation, but include them in our business plan for future development. The market place sells translation programs already. What can theExact Word® contribute? Searching data-bases by Internet or World-Wide Web, or communicating with conventional hard-copy documents, or computer files, we may have to receive huge documents which require translation before we can begin to use them. The translation process can require considerable time, or sometimes unwieldy reading, or clarifications, or sometimes mental "searching" for intended meaning. Imagine the possible solutions. Imagine side-by-side context translations saving many of those steps. Imagine theExact Word® in Other Languages! And the coup of this potential resides in the context patterns themselves. We have informally assessed other languages for theExact Word®’s context patterns. In Latin, Greek, Italian, French, Arabic, Turkish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, and Spanish, the "colors translate!" Assume that language itself has identifiable context; thus, the translation process for an individual human or for a computer could reduce the current bulk to the four patterns and how each language expresses thought patterns. That could be fun! Imagine!! Multi-cultural business has proliferated globally. With that surge comes an intensified need for clarity. Information overload too naturally increases, with the added problem of potential misunderstanding. theExact Word® actively seeks partners to parallel the languages of the world side-by-side on a computer screen with English. Not only words can translate side-by-side, but we could program context comparisons. How one language expresses a word, thought, or concept may require more than vocabulary in another language. To do so, imagine a split screen with explanations, wording, comparable sentencing, not just vocabulary language-to-language, word by word. Imagine thinking as your counterpart thinks!! Imagine planning how you communicate in the terms of your multi-cultural client, company, friend, or acquaintance. Imagine not having to plow through initial misunderstanding. These possibilities start to define new goals for such new translation initiatives.
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