The problem with translation software is context. When you hear or read a sentence, your brain refers not only to the spoken words but also to its accumulated experience. The words "con" and "pen," for example, have various meanings and can represent different parts of speech. But when you read "the con is in the pen," you know instantly that you are dealing with an incarcerated criminal—your life experience allows each word to contextualize the other. A computer can't do that because it has no frame of reference to help it match the contingent sense of "con" as criminal to the contingent sense of "pen" as jail. Short of being endowed with a knowledge base as vast as the human mind's, a computer simply cannot read context."[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/webhead/2006/01/the_translators_blues.html] | The problem with translation software is context. When you hear or read a sentence, your brain refers not only to the spoken words but also to its accumulated experience. The words "con" and "pen," for example, have various meanings and can represent different parts of speech. But when you read "the con is in the pen," you know instantly that you are dealing with an incarcerated criminal—your life experience allows each word to contextualize the other. A computer can't do that because it has no frame of reference to help it match the contingent sense of "con" as criminal to the contingent sense of "pen" as jail. Short of being endowed with a knowledge base as vast as the human mind's, a computer simply cannot read context."[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/webhead/2006/01/the_translators_blues.html] |