From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos
From Address: YourName{at}YourISP.com
Subject: Re: Microsoft emulates Star Trek...

In article , Wouter
Valentijn  wrote:

> Daniel schreef op 5-6-2014 16:19:
> > On 5/06/2014 11:11 AM, Your Name wrote:
> >
> > 
> >> There will always be errors in any automated translation, especially
> >> spoken translation. Computers simply are intelligent enough to
> >> understand context, etc.
> 
> I think you meant 'not intelligent' :-). But yeah, context is extremely 
> important.

Rats! Yep, there should have been a "not" in there.  



> > Back in 1985-88, I was doing my Associate Diploma for Technical Teaching
> > and had to write a paper. I did mine on Computer vs Human interfaces
> > and, apart from pointing out the confusion with there/their/they're, I
> > gave another, sailing, example, " *Wind* in the sails as the *wind* is
> > getting up" and asked how a computer might distinguish
between a written
> > *wind* and *wind* ??
> 
> Yeah, the /way/ something is said. The tone, the intonation. A computer 
> would also need to be able to understand stuff like sarcasm.
> They have a long way to go.

Colloquialisms and technical phrases (computer science, medical, etc.)
are another two more things that auto-translations fall over trying to
understand.

With speech there's also the problems of actually understanding the
person in the first place. Apple's Siri, for example, is nowhere near
as good as the marketing department would have you believe - it works
fine for a few, doesn't work at all for a few, and is just not properly
usable by the vast majority.
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