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Author Topic: Precursor to a Universal Translator
Noemon
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Device Translates Spoken Japanese and English

Hm. I wonder what effect a more robust, true "universal" translator would have on the diversity of languages in the world? If devices like this became ubiquitous, I could actually imagine that it would protect smaller, threatened languages from extinction, since the pressure to learn one of the dominant languages would be relieved.
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Hobbes
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This is incredibly cool, but it's also a gigiantic leap step and a bound away from a universal translator, unless universal translator merely has all known languages programmed in, instead of having a generalizied language converter function to translate to or from an unkown language. Which I guess depends on which sci-fi you read. [Wink]

Like I said though, cool! [Cool]

Hobbes [Smile]
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CaySedai
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yes, but can you talk to your dog or cat?

and, of course, some of the difficulties in translation have been discussed here .
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Kama
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[Angst]
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Taalcon
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Don't worry, Kama. You're still much more charming and useful to have around than a metal device that probably spits out Engrish.

Besides, it'd be good long time before they start putting Polish into one of those things [Wink]
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Kama
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If all else fails, I'll just stay home with our babies.
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Taalcon
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Long live the Universal Translator!
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Noemon
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[ROFL]
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