Pocket Interpreter

Google is attempting to turn their Translate app (you probably have it on your Android already) into a universal translator:

What makes Google’s approach so interesting is that the company doesn’t actually employ a linguist anywhere on its team. Instead, the Translate app is simply designed to get better with experience. Since Google’s specialty is collecting, sorting an analyzing data, the Translate algorithms aren’t designed to understand grammatical rules. Rather, as Spiegel puts it, they “search through the clutter, gather data and learn along the way.”

What's interesting is that is the exact operating principle described by the writers of the original Star Trek series. Of course, the Star Trek version used T.V. Magic to learn an alien language in just a few sentences, but the principle is sound.


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Hat-tip to Jeff W.