From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ed7c87f55ef3e9e8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-02-01 10:47:08 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!c03.atl99!news.usenetserver.com!newshosting.com!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!border1.nntp.ash.giganews.com!border2.nntp.ash.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!attbi_s03.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Larry Elmore User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031130 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GLADE, Linux Kernel Modules etc, References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.178.240 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s03 1075661224 24.1.178.240 (Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:47:04 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:47:04 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:47:08 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5168 Date: 2004-02-01T18:47:08+00:00 List-Id: sk wrote: > Georg Bauhaus : > > > Traduttore, traditore in Watzlawick's classic notwithstanding > I do not have a classic education so I have no understanding of > the reference. > > However, and since this is a "comp.lang.*" usenet forum ... > > > ... if you know French (or Latin) ... > > ... and my previous comments concerning "google" translations. > > I had, a long time ago, a thought : if I studied Latin, which > I believe has a more rigid structure than English, French, > German and Spanish, could a reasonable human language > translator be developed, better than those which I have tried > on the internet ? > > The idea being that any of the above 4 languages would be > translated to Latin and then translated into the desired > language ? > > English >--+ +--> English > | | > French >--+ +--> French > |---> Latin --->| > German >--+ +--> German > | | > Spanish >--+ +--> Spanish > > Does Latin have a more "logical" rigid structure ? And if so, > would it be a reasonable middle language for a more universal > translator ? No, I fear it wouldn't. Latin is a good deal more 'regular' in some ways than English (or any of the other Germanic languages), but there's still a lot of irregular parts. While it has more structure in some ways, this allows greater flexibility in other ways. Word order is a lot freer in Latin than in English and serves more as a hint on emphasis than core meaning. Latin is very much a human languages and has all the foibles of the others, just expressed in different ways. Perhaps a language like lojban might work better as an intermediate language, but I have real doubts about _consistently_ _good_ machine translation becoming possible before we have some form of AI. --Larry