Comments on: machine translation, an experiment

By: Cyborg - human or machine? « CaroKann’s Periscope

Cyborg - human or machine? « CaroKann’s Periscope — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:09:53 +0000

[...] Cyborg – human or machine? 2009 April 9 tags: cyborgs, future, transhumanism by carokann When Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline coined the term “cyborg” 50 years ago they were talking about people living in the outer space. Today we can define a cyborg as a human (or other organism) that get increased capabilities with the help of technology. With a passive definition like this most of us are cyborgs already. I think that the term is not interesting until it is technology that substantially improves our abilities. We have many examples, such as pacemakers, prostheses and even wheel chairs. They make things much better for the individual in question but maybe not with much better functionality than a healthy body. Transhumanism is a term that is very related to cyborgs. Transhumanism is a philosophy (or maybe philosophies) that not only believe in a very bright posthuman future but also strive for it. The typical transhumanist have great hopes on the The Singularity. [...]

By: monitoring, legislative changes and control « CaroKann’s Periscope

monitoring, legislative changes and control « CaroKann’s Periscope — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:37:13 +0000

[...] do not forget my challenge. More about it after the next “conclusion [...]

By: nanotechnology « CaroKann’s Periscope

nanotechnology « CaroKann’s Periscope — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:58:14 +0000

[...] do not forget my challenge. More about it when all these 4 trends are [...]

By: Mike Unwalla

Mike Unwalla — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 07:50:55 +0000

I agree with you. Fluency and accuracy are related.

A translation can be fluent and not accurate.

A translation can be accurate and not fluent. If a translation has very low fluency, people cannot understand it. Therefore, it is not accurate.

Sorry that I was not clear in my previous message.

By: carokann

carokann — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:49:28 +0000

Interesting experiment. I got your point but in the same time I wonder if it is possible to be accurate without some degree of fluency and even more being fluent without being accurate. Just a short second of reflections…

By: Mike Unwalla

Mike Unwalla — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:26:47 +0000

“When can we automatically translate a text with the such a quality that you can not see that it is translated?”

You blog post is interesting. Thank you.

I think that quality has two parts: fluency and accuracy. If the purpose of machine translation is to give information to people in their language, accuracy is more important than fluency. If a machine translation is correct, the fluency of the translation does not matter. For a small evaluation of the accuracy and the fluency of machine translation, see http://www.international-english.co.uk/mt-evaluation.html.