In what Jost Zetzsche deemed a “weird (and unknowledgeable) missive” in his computer newsletter for translators, The Tool Kit, the Executive Office of the President and the National Economic Council announced “automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world — greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration.”
He also expressed disappointment that the administration had not learned from Secretary of State Clinton’s “Reset” button gaffe and taken that as a hint that machine translation might not quite be where they thought it was.
Furthermore he was struck by the similarity to IBM’s announcement of its first public machine translation test in 1054:
“The potential value of this experiment for the national interest in defense or in peace is readily seen,” Prof. Leon Dostert, Georgetown language scholar who originated the practical approach to the idea of electronic translation, declared to a group of scientists and United States government officials who witnessed the demonstration at IBM World Headquarters, 57th Street and Madison Avenue.
“Those in charge of this experiment now consider it to be definitely established that meaning conversion through electronic language translation is feasible.”
Although he emphasized that it is not yet possible “to insert a Russian book at one end and come out with an English book at the other,” Doctor Dostert predicted that “five, perhaps three years hence, interlingual meaning conversion by electronic process in important functional areas of several languages may well be an accomplished fact.”
The above might serve as a reminder of the overeager enthusiasm some technological pundits may experience when faced with he latest developments and discoveries as well as computational advances. But ATA president Jiri Stejskal put things into perspective in a public letter to President Obama, crafted in response:
… computational linguists have been working for over 50 years to achieve “fully automatic high-quality computer translation,” and despite all the changes wrought in our lives by technological advances, no computer can match the language skills of a five-year-old child.
The reason is simple: Computers cannot translate effectively – that is, they cannot entirely convey meaning from one language to another – because computers are logical and real human languages are not. Using a language well requires knowledge of how the world is understood in that language. And while computers can analyze, compile and compare, they cannot understand.
This is not to say that translation technology is not very useful within certain limits. Computers can process enormous volumes of text at incredible speeds, and provide the gist of a foreign-language document quickly and cheaply. Translation software is therefore the perfect tool for producing a “good enough” translation.
But in many human interactions – most critically in diplomacy, commerce, and national security, the very areas cited in your report – accuracy, nuance and cultural sensitivity are paramount, and “good enough” is… not good enough. Errors in translation and interpreting can waste enormous amounts of time and money, and they can generate literally incalculable costs in terms of misunderstanding and loss of prestige.
In short, both translation software and qualified human translators are vital to your goal of achieving language security. Today all the leading proponents of computer translation recognize that human beings will always be essential, no matter how sophisticated translation programs become.
“The potential value of this experiment for the national interest in defense or in peace is readily seen,” Prof. Leon Dostert, Georgetown language scholar who originated the practical approach to the idea of electronic translation, declared to a group of scientists and United States government officials who witnessed the demonstration at IBM World Headquarters, 57th Street and Madison Avenue.
“Those in charge of this experiment now consider it to be definitely established that meaning conversion through electronic language translation is feasible.”
Although he emphasized that it is not yet possible “to insert a Russian book at one end and come out with an English book at the other,” Doctor Dostert predicted that “five, perhaps three years hence, interlingual meaning conversion by electronic process in important functional areas of several languages may well be an accomplished fact.”
