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Here's what Babelfish just gave me for the first paragraph:

Named in July 2007 representative of Four-bit byte (the United States, European Union, Russia and UNO), Tony Blair took her functions in September. Its mission had been defined in a letter of the ten Foreign Ministers of the States of the south of l' Europe members of l' EU.

Four-bit byte indeed.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed May 14th, 2008 at 02:19:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I see Babelfish doesn't do semantics.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed May 14th, 2008 at 02:23:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Or gender concordance.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed May 14th, 2008 at 02:24:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Google doesn't do gender either (any more than l' or d').

But it did get the Quartet. Which suggests it's got a better contextual algorithm of some sort.

It's all still a long way from automatic AND readable.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed May 14th, 2008 at 03:16:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
An early version of Google translation did do semantics. It translated Sarkozy (French) to Blair (English)....
by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Thu May 15th, 2008 at 04:13:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
That's the well known result of a one-to-one or one-to-{defined} translation paradigm.  

Translation software systems have to abstract Rules for language use in order to get anything done.  Actual language use gives a big neener-neener to those abstractions, unfortunately.  Not only are the relationships one-to-many toss in the Semantic Differential and it looks pretty darn hopeless.

On the other hand, humans are able to Speak Much Good so there's got to be some way to solve it.  Suggesting them wot are working on the problem (not me, BTW) are looking in the wrong place(s) for solutions.

by ATinNM on Wed May 14th, 2008 at 02:51:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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