¿Que de qué?
With all due respect, this is pure BS. The day you can show me such software will be the day I sign over my first-born male child to you.
Most programs now operate on the level of translating “I don’t smoke [cigarettes]” into “I don’t smoke [meat].” One word in English, two completely different and unrelated words in Russian. The software chooses the wrong one, even when the context (a description of myself) is perfectly clear.
We park our cars in the same garage! 
BTW, I’m familiar with around half a dozen languages, in that I can scan the front page of a foreign newspaper, watch a newscast, or eavesdrop on a conversation, and get the gist of what’s there.
Aside from Russian, the only one I would even try translating from is German. I used to be fairly fluent in it (I worked as an interpreter for German tourists back in the '80s), but after 20-odd years of seldom using it, my German is very, very rusty.
You don’t use it, you lose it!
Yes, and remember that Spock only had to widen the UT’s pattern recognition capabilities in order to communicate with The Companion.
They were even making progress with the Chrystaline Entity before Bad Mom killed it.
I think 10 years ago perhaps you could get away with such hyperbole, but no-one would take such a view seriously today.
Because while translation software still has a way to go, it’s clear that their accuracy has increased by leaps and bounds, already beyond what some people believed AI would be capable of.
I don’t know about the quality of translations into Russian, but I occasionally use Baidu translate for English<->Chinese. Not to translate individual characters, which I usually know, but to translate phrasal verbs and idioms into structures native speakers would use (and I’ve confirmed this with native speakers). For example, it correctly translates the sentence “I cannot turn a blind eye; you let me down”, which would obviously trip up a naive translation program.
Knowing very little about Chinese, I can’t offer much of a comment, other that phrasal verbs and idioms are fixed and fairly easy to recognize in any language once you learn them. I would assume these can be incorporated into software without much difficulty.
Give me an example of something that you think would be difficult to translate. There’s no point with the “smoke” example in Chinese; it uses the same verb just as we do in English.
Did you know that Americans and Europeans have completely opposite interpretations of the idiom “A rolling stone gathers no moss”?
In other words, to smoke a cigarette is the same as to smoke a piece of meat? Interesting.
How about “He bit the dust,” “They died with their boots on,” and “Keep the home fires burning”?
Interesting in that I would not automatically assume the two to be the same.
If you want a real challenge…
No, and that is interesting. So the American interpretation is like the original meaning (gathering moss was meant to be a good thing, so the original meaning was something like “stay focused on one place, task or you won’t achieve anything”).
Well it’s the same character just as it’s the same word in English. Of course a different meaning is understood.
I didn’t assume that the two are the same character, I already knew that.
You got me. All of these phrases were not correctly translated.
But I stand by my point regardless. Back in the day, if you wanted to test translation software just about any sentence would present a challenge. Now we have to think of uncommon phrases
(OK, “bit the dust” is actually pretty common, and I’m surprised it didn’t translate that correctly…it correctly translates “kick the bucket”…
“Died with their boots on” I first heard in an american movie and remember just guessing what it meant. “keep the home fires burning” I’ve seldom heard and actually didn’t realize it was a phrase as opposed to poetic language).
200-some years from now, a gadget small enough to hold in your hand might contain and be able to translate even idioms like that.
Hopefully they can add it to the handheld flashlights they use.
Nothing, really. The character of Deanna Troi was kind of a wasted opportunity.
The problem Star Trek had - and I stress I loved ST:TNG - is common to a lot of fantasy and sci-fi franchises, which is that the author(s) create magic/tech to allow the characters to accomplish things, but then the existence of that magic/tech creates inevitable holes in a normal plot. So Troi’s telepathic abilities were rarely employed, and the transporter was always blocked by something at just the wrong time, and… and the eagles didn’t fly Frodo and Sam TO Mount Doom, and Jedi powers seem to come and go randomly, and so on and so forth.
This was why John Campbell claimed it was impossible to write a science fiction murder mystery. The heroic science detective would just invent a gizmo that solved the mystery.
It took Isaac Asimov (and others) to show that, yet, sf murder mysteries can be done (and Randall Garrett did the same for fantasy murder mysteries) so long as you set out the rules ahead of time and stick to 'em.
Star Trek’s Prime Directive should have been for the writers: “First, Do No Harm,” i.e., don’t come up with something that changes the rules of the universe. (At least not without thinking through the implications.)
The Bajoran Wormhole changed the universe tremendously…and was taken fully into account by the DS9 creators. The duplication of Will and Tom Riker…wasn’t!
Yes, and the UT cannot handle it when they don’t. Which is why Kirk said it wasn’t “100% efficient.”