This is closely tied to software which is being developed, some of it secretly, to enable machines to understand and use language. As of now this will be government and corporate owned and controlled. I say closely tied because that is how translation works; only someone or something that understands language can translate perfectly.
That said, crude translations into little used languages are nearly worthless due to syntax issues. Useful work requires at least one person fluent in the language. Fred > > Could open source MT be such a strategic investment? I don't know, but > I'd like to at least raise the question. I think the alternative will > be, for the foreseeable future, to accept that this piece of > technology will be proprietary, and to rely on goodwill for any > integration that concerns Wikimedia. Not the worst outcome, but also > not the best one. > > Are there open source MT efforts that are close enough to merit > scrutiny? In order to be able to provide high quality result, you > would need not only a motivated, well-intentioned group of people, but > some of the smartest people in the field working on it. I doubt we > could more than kickstart an effort, but perhaps financial backing at > significant scale could at least help a non-profit, open source effort > to develop enough critical mass to go somewhere. > > All best, > Erik > > [1] > http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/animations/growth/AnimationProjectsGrowthWp.html > [2] https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/pricing > -- > Erik Möller > VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation > > Wikipedia and our other projects reach more than 500 million people every > month. The world population is estimated to be >7 billion. Still a long > way to go. Support us. Join us. Share: https://wikimediafoundation.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
