Re: <nettime> The cultural bias of translating programs

[Keith Sanborn <mrzero@panix.com>]

I think there's a bit more involved than dictionary tweaking in
translation programs, although it does explain the French/English vs.
Portuguese/English example fairly well. The problem, of course, is what
one understands by a dictionary, which as Julian Dibbel is highly labor
intensive.

What there is more to it than dictionary tweaking is the level of
complexity of natural languages, limitations in computing power, and the
fact that languages mutate in ways that may not be able to be accounted
for for some time if ever. In a way, it's still like a bunch of very
gifted monkeys (the tweakers) with typewriters. How many would it take how
long to produce a decent "dictionary" i.e. a set of fairly reliable
correlations between two natural languages and a set of algorithms for
parsing texts in those languages which would allow the dictionaries to be
applied. I think the rules for parsing natural languages are
extraordinarily complex.

One might argue that the level of artificial stupidity produced by
translation programs is a good measure of just how distant we are from
making an adequate machine based account of human intelligence.

In addition, it is very difficult to account for the cultural history
built into a natural language which is what makes dictionary reading so
wonderful in the first place.

Finally, our dictionary tweakers are very much in the position currently
of Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet. No matter how much they copy and
transcribe they will never render anything but an aburdly literal account
of things. And evern if they were successful temporarily, unless their
parsing engines were extremely intelligent--in fact self-modifying--they
would be, as Saussure described Esperanto--like a duck trying to hatch a
hen's egg. You can never step into the same river of language twice.

Keith Sanborn



On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Julian Dibbell wrote:

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