in Creative Channel,
Now that the internet is starting to force us to interact with people from all over the world, a wealth of translation tools have come out to smooth out potential hiccups in communication. As you will see, not all translations were created equally, but can you really do business with someone in another language safely while still communicating clearly? Should you just learn another language, or will a translation tool be enough?
Today, we look at the power of a translation tool, both as a method to entertain and as a method to educate and communicate.
Translation Party
If you visit Engrish.com, you will come across all sorts of creative uses of the English language. Perhaps the Translation Party website takes a shot at this premise with its simple game. Type a phrase (in English) into the box and “find equilibrium.” The tool then translates your (hopefully) random phrase into Japanese and then back into English until it finds a translation that acts as an infinite loop.
At first I found this to be just a novelty, but the more I look at it, the more fascinating the idea of switching from English to Japanese becomes. Watch how the phrase changes and you will see the equilibrium often has a completely different meaning. Does this app translate literally word for word, or does it look for a close translation and list that?
It’s at least a fun diversion to test whether phrases and words translate well in another language, and I suppose if you were attempting to learn Japanese this would be a great excuse to read and test your skills.
The Berlitz and Rosetta Stone Series’
As far as paid apps are concerned, these two are the best of the best. The Berlitz series is something I grew up on, testing out my skills in Spanish first then Japanese as I moved into College. I’ve never tried Rosetta Stone, but such a robust offering in one package seems very attractive. For the price you pay, the program is like a course, and they say it is surprisingly effective.
The biggest difference between the two programs is that Berlitz is geared toward learning a single language while Rosetta equips you to learn from a variety of languages. Both have an audio component bt Rosetta provides you with a USB headset designed to correct pronunciation. It’s subtle differences like this that show the difference between the two software most clearly.
Berlitz is far more casual.
Decoding Dead Languages
Imagine a piece of software that can translate dead languages! Scientists out of MIT have developed a new computer program that automatically translates an ancient language into a known language, a discovery they hope could help them decipher some of the scripts that are yet to be understood.
The program has already done a successful translation of a three-thousand-year-old Ugaritic language.
The system is then able to make assumptions about the way different words are formed and whether they consist of a prefix and a suffix, for example. Through repeated analysis, the program linked letters and words to map nearly all Ugaritic (last used around 1200 BC in Syria) symbols to their Hebrew equivalents in a matter of hours.
This is a huge breakthrough for historians, who now have the ability to spend less time translating and more time studying.
Language Translation and its Uses
These examples are here to show a few things. Built from the Google Translate API, Translation party shows us we still have a long way to go as far as universal translations are concerned. Berlitz and Rosetta are there to show us that we can learn other languages comfortably, efficiently and most importantly correctly. With apps that are able to decode dead languages we now have nothing holding us back from uncovering the secret to hidden records of the past written long lost words.
Perhaps this will lead us to massive linguistic breakthroughs. It is clear that the internet is not just unlocking the ability to glean knowledge, but that knowledge should (and eventually will be) universal.
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