Although automatic translation has been making great progress, there is still plenty of headroom for improvement. In a recent post, I linked to an article in German from the Stuttgarter Zeitung, sent in by Julia Hockenmaier. I started to add a link to Google's "Language Tools" translation, but after reading the Englished version, I decided to post the link separately.
Google's "Language Tools" MT of the article can be found here. The headline and first paragraph are funny enough to quote in full:
"many new rules a little meaningfully"
Tübingen - the Tuebinger linguist Wolfgang star field counts on an increasing scooping out of the spelling reform. Much at the new set of rules is "of the linguistic point of view from a little meaningful" and in practice will not become generally accepted, did not say a university professor on Saturday. "who comes to few thereby by right, is the teachers. They have simply no authority during the orthography." For the pupils against it a return to the old rules would not be a particularly large problem.
My feelings exactly, did not say a university professor on Saturday. Much at many things is "of the linguistic point of view from a little meaningful," certainly, and there can be no question that "who comes to few thereby by right, is the teachers."
Somebody should put these programs in a time capsule. Once MT really works, a reliable source of innocent amusement will be lost forever.
Posted by Mark Liberman at August 7, 2004 01:18 PM