Re: ALT tools (was: Censorship by laziness)

[Daniel Dardailler]
> today, Altavista is doing live translation...

[Larry Goldberg]
> Has anyone analyzed the quality of these automated translations?
> Good enough for a native speaker?

Not hardly.  On several mailing lists and newsfroups I frequent, it
has become an amusing exercise to drive a phrase to closure (the point
at which a round-trip produces the starting phrase).  In a recent
example, "I hate spam and want Congress to make it illegal" came back
as something like "I hate Spam, which it Congress educates itself
illegally."  Try it.  Have fun.
<URL:http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/>.

-Chris
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Received on Friday, 23 January 1998 15:50:14 UTC