My anti-terrorist tax dollars are spent on MMOs?

[Snrrub]

Originally posted by Rosuav
There will never EVER be an automated translator that can handle these.

Never say never . At my workplace for example, remarkable results have been achieved using genetic algorithms and sophisticated neural networks. I estimate than in a few decades (maybe 50 years?), such a translator could exist with stunning accuracy.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Snrrub
Never say never . At my workplace for example, remarkable results have been achieved using genetic algorithms and sophisticated neural networks. I estimate than in a few decades (maybe 50 years?), such a translator could exist with stunning accuracy.

Actually, I will say never, on this. Yes, translators can and no doubt will improve. But some things are impossible to translate, and no amount of technological improvement will change that. If it's possible to translate perfectly from one language to another, then the second must be a superset of the first (or else they're completely identical), such as semaphore signals and "Here Come Dots" - as far as I know, any semaphore message can be translated into Morse.

As a simple example of how subtle differences make perfect translation impossible, some years ago I read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (in English - translated from the original French). It puzzled me why Capt Nemo, lord and master of the vessel, should address the Professor as "Sir" - a token of some deference, in English. The original French used Monsieur(sp?) which is slightly different in meaning, carrying respect without so much deference. The translators had two options: Either put in a similar, but not identical, English word, or transliterate the French word and expect people to understand the nuances of the French (which, in this instance, is quite reasonable - and I've seen a number of translations of French works that do precisely that). This sort of thing will always happen, and as cultures change and shift, so will the language, making it impossible for human or computer to keep up.

[Rosuav]

I picked a slightly bad example above, actually. Semaphore and Morse aren't languages, they're encodings - on par with handwriting, ASCII, EBCDIC, and so on (they only render letters, not words/sentences/thoughts - the message can still be in English, Latin, or REXX, and the encoder doesn't care). The same translation issues occur with encodings as with languages, but it's easier to find perfect translations between encodings than between languages.

[Snrrub]

Originally posted by Rosuav
it's easier to find perfect translations between encodings than between languages.

I'm not saying that computerized translators can offer a 'perfect' translation (in fact, to quote myself, I said they could be stunningly accurate), but they should be able to achieve a level of accuracy comparable to human translators.

Also, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea isn't what we were originally discussing, but rather the following phrase from the article:

"The bomb-maker and his students could be spread across the world, using instant language translation tools to communicate."

You said this wasn't possible, but I believe a future automated translator would be sufficient to accomodate this.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Snrrub
I'm not saying that computerized translators can offer a 'perfect' translation (in fact, to quote myself, I said they could be stunningly accurate), but they should be able to achieve a level of accuracy comparable to human translators.

Right. No human translator is perfect at handling poetry, humour or slang, and no computer ever will either. (Just look at the multiple translations there are of opera - I am personally familiar with three quite different English versions of Lehar's "Merry Widow", and that's not including parodies).

Also, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea isn't what we were originally discussing, but rather the following phrase from the article:

"The bomb-maker and his students could be spread across the world, using instant language translation tools to communicate."

You said this wasn't possible, but I believe a future automated translator would be sufficient to accomodate this.

The one thing that a computer-based translation tool can offer that a human can't is: Speed. There's NO WAY that you could have real-time chat in multiple languages with human translators. The trouble is, even allowing for technological advances, translation of pure written word is HARD. Really hard. If you have a lecturer with a translator standing beside him, the translator has more than just the words to go on, but real-time chat doesn't offer that. And what about abbreviations, which become _more_ common, not less, in the situation suggested? Extra difficulty for a computer.

But who knows? Maybe I'll be proved wrong in a few years or a couple of decades. If so, I'll eat my words with pleasure - technological advances delight me, regardless of what uses they may be put to.

[Malacasta]

Well anyways, when I was on SL fighting LePen's groupies, most of the anti-lepen activists were french or german, and most of the lepenites themselves were french. I just had google translate up the whole time and copied and pasted. It probably added a couple of seconds to the conversation and that's it. SL has an addin that uses google translate called the babel fish also which broadcasts your speaking into another language. As you say, it's not perfect, but it allows communication.

Now sure it's true that people could communicate with eachother on these games but I don't buy the physics thing. Buildings aren't affected by weapons in SL, there's a flash of light and some particles, but that's it - the buildings are untouched. Neither do weapons affect people in the same way as they would in RL. The worst that can happen to you is to get orbited (where you're pushed thousands of feet above the ground and have to wait ages while you gently float back to the land) death itself, just teleports you to your grid of choice.

Every example the article used was either wrong, invented or exaggerated - bad journalism with what in mind? To create enough dread and alarm to make people want secret services across the world online and logging your every move?

[Tharzon]

Second Life trains you to conduct terrorist actions in the real world like playing doom trains you to fire a sniper rifle.

That is to say: not at all in any remotely meaningful sense.

While it is a helpful tool to have things like online recreations of various areas and locations, if you have appropriate data to recreate them accurately enough in the first place, you have enough information to make the same 3d modelling using pretty much any tool you would care to apply.

More and more, as computers, and the online community advance past the understanding of those who weren't raised understanding it, so to increases the ignorant fear-mongering about how the internet is going to destroy the world.

[Darion]

Second Life trains you to conduct terrorist actions in the real world like playing doom trains you to fire a sniper rifle.

That is to say: not at all in any remotely meaningful sense.

This would have been wildly incorrect if you had chosen a more realistic shooting game, but that topic is a thread unto itself.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Darion
This would have been wildly incorrect if you had chosen a more realistic shooting game, but that topic is a thread unto itself.

Yeah. Doesn't the Army actually consider the America's Army game to be a useful tool for familiarizing people (mainly potential recruits) with basic weapons and tactics?

I seem to remember reading interviews with people from the Army saying the game was useful for those purposes - which was why they funded its development in the first place.

I also believe that development is still ongoing.

[Darion]

Even outside of America's Army, any game that can teach you how to place an aiming point (and many games do this on actual weapons) is useful from a training perspective. Games that incorporate slow variations in fixed-point aiming due to breathing are helpful even moreso, but now we're off topic.