Re: Computerized translation into conlang?

--- On Mon, 12/1/08, David Vercauteren <njenfalgar@...> wrote:

> From: David Vercauteren <njenfalgar@...>
...

> 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
Machine translation seems to be one of those areas where, when first approached, it
looks like it would not be terribly difficult. Then, a little deeper into the
project you suddenly hit an impenetrable brick wall, and any further progress
seems impossibly difficult.

"When one initially examines some area of the syntax of a natural language, it often
seems to manifest what can only be called descriptive chaos." --Paul M. Postal
in "Edge-Based Model-Theoretic Syntax".

--gary