Re: Computerized translation into conlang?

2008/11/26 Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>

> Has anybody ever given any thought to writing a computer program to
> translate English into a conlang?

I am pretty sure *lots* of people have given it lots of thought already, but
I seriously doubt anything really useful has already come out of it. I have
once been thinking of it, but for natural languages (where such a thing
would be way more useful, since that promotes understanding between humans
instead of taking away the fun of translating things into your own
language), and I gave up when realising the messiness of languages. Things
that are expressed using some structure in one language often use completely
different structures in other languages. Just take the following example:
Dutch: We hebben de kosten in het totaal verrekend.
English: We have taken the expenses into account when making the total sum.
A computer translation in the way you propose would give at best: "We have
### the expenses into the total sum," where the ### have to be a verb
meaning covering the meanings of both "inserting the one into the other" and
of "computing, making the sum". Such a verb does not (as far as I know)
exist in English, so that circumlocution is the only solution. I don't think
anybody has ever made a computer program smart enough to get that kind of
ideas.


> Anyway, just a random thought. It might be fun. It would be a way to
> produce a huge volume of works in that conlang, like translating the
> complete works of Shakespeare in an afternoon. :)

Most probably writing a sufficiently good program would take infinitely more
time that translating it all by hand. Now and then my colleagues at work
send mails, with translations in English (for our English-speaking
colleagues) using computer translation. We always have a good laugh. That's
probably most benefit one gets from machine translation nowadays... :-)

Greets
David

--
Idustvok va yentelkvil gifpir, puk gifpir, ivan kitil.

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