Re: ALT tools (was: Censorship by laziness)

to follow up on what Larry Goldberg said:

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

Good question.  What questions should that analysis ask?

	How much of the information in the foreign language 
	document was accessible without the auto-translation?

	How much of the information in the foreign language
	document was accessible with the translation?

The experience I have heard from a linguist is that the most
effective approach is not to try to clean up the output to be
fluent in the target language.  People are very flexible and
tolerant of technical errors.  The reader can read through that.
The first brute force word for word transliteration removes the
bulk of the mystery.  Polishing after that is past the knee in
the curve.

Al
--
asgilman@access.digex.net

Received on Friday, 23 January 1998 15:56:53 UTC