At 02:10 PM 5/22/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Indeed, we're doing our best to make our content available in many
>languages. It's tricky, though: To have an "official" translation would
>require that we somehow review it for style and substance -- that we make
>sure that it's really a fair and accurate translation of the original. At
>least with Altavista's Babelfish there's no such presumption -- everyone
>knows it's machine-translated (on the fly, at that). Far from perfect, I'll
>admit, but very easy from our perspective (just add the appropriate URLs
>pointing to the Babelfish servers) and potentially quite helpful, we think,
>to those who happen not to speak English.
>
>Comments on the extent to which this is helpful? Better than nothing? A
>decent start? Or not? I've found it handy in a pinch. For example, I've
>gotten a few email inquiries re remote participation from people who don't
>speak English; using Babelfish, I've at least been able to read their
>messages and respond in their respective languages, as well as provide a
>link to translated copies of the remote participation announcement page.
>
>BTW, this actually isn't new (to us): we used the same technique in the
>meeting archive of the January Representation in Cyberspace Study (see
><http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rcs/>).
I did this with the ORSC pages about a year ago. It works
well enough that people can make head or tail of it, however
and I think this is without exception, the German translation
just plain flat out does not work. It produces gibberish.
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Remember, amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.
