International Language

[fastboy21]

Originally Posted by indiscriminate_hater [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Translator tech is getting so good that language barriers will be minimal

It is and will get much better...but it isn't there yet. The last hurdles to overcome for true translation software are not problems of computational power; they are linguistic issues that people haven't worked out how to deal with yet, and probably won't work out a model that could be confused as perfect for some time.

The problems of wrestling with discourse representation theory, for example, aren't going anywhere. Formal pragmatics isn't going anywhere.

Of course, if you mean "break the language barrier" to mean something as meaningless in the big picture of linguistics as carrying a device that can translate "where is the bathroom?" into a hundred languages, then yes...we're there.

[magnetaress]

Originally Posted by fastboy21 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It is and will get much better...but it isn't there yet. The last hurdles to overcome for true translation software are not problems of computational power; they are linguistic issues that people haven't worked out how to deal with yet, and probably won't work out a model that could be confused as perfect for some time.

The problems of wrestling with discourse representation theory, for example, aren't going anywhere. Formal pragmatics isn't going anywhere.

Of course, if you mean "break the language barrier" to mean something as meaningless in the big picture of linguistics as carrying a device that can translate "where is the bathroom?" into a hundred languages, then yes...we're there.

If you can't describe mathematical physics in terms of bathrooms you're obviously not there yet.