Hatrack River Forum: Precursor to a Universal Translator

This is topic Precursor to a Universal Translator in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

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.

Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :

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

Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :

yes, but can you talk to your dog or cat?

and, of course, some of the difficulties in translation have been discussed here .

Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :

[Angst]

Posted by Taalcon (Member # 839) on :

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]

Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :

If all else fails, I'll just stay home with our babies.

Posted by Taalcon (Member # 839) on :

Long live the Universal Translator!

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

[ROFL]