Machine Translation
Machine translation is a type of program that automatically translates text from one language into another language. One way of doing this is by converting the input text into an intermediate form which represents the meaning of the text. The reverse transform is done using the output language to get the result. State of the art in this area doesn't produce perfect translations (something that probably isn't acheivable anytime soon), but you are able to get the gist of what the text is saying.
There are several companies that market machine translation systems, with some providing web translation services (see babelfish.altavista.com for an example). There have been a couple of open source projects on machine translation started, but as best I can tell, none are very good. And none appear to be in active development.
A good, open source machine translation system will be increasingly important as the Internet continues to grow. It will also be important as globalization continues to increase. The exchange of ideas, regardless of the language, is important. And this is a project that would be able to leverage the open source idea of numerous, world-wide contributors to maximum effect.
You want a way to instantly make Mozilla better than Internet Explorer? Incorporate a machine translation system into it. If I'm visiting a page in another language, I want to be able to press a button and have it translated. Same thing for email. Language shouldn't be a barrier for communication anymore.
Posted by markf at September 24, 2001 03:48 PM