Maggie's Farm

Pardon my skepticism, but I doubt the ability of computers to translate languages will ever be more than partial. Some reasons:

Errors may be present. Consider the German, "Der Hund beisst den Mann," and "Den Mann beisst der Hund." Both mean the same: the dog bites the man. But "Den Mann beisst den Hund" is untranslatable because a small error strips away all clues as to who is biting whom.

Some utterances may evade the most sophisticated programs. One such is, "Die Frau beisst die Katze." It's correct and also untranslatable, because there is no clue as to its meaning. Only through context and tone of voice and emphasis could we understand whether the woman bit the cat.

In some languages, the expression "He saw her" is exactly the same as "He sees her," and the tenses of English simply don't square with the ways temporal sequences are clarified. How would a computer know how to supply the necessary definite and indefinite articles, when translating from a language that has none into English?

The last time I tested a computer program to see whether it could translate a simple text, the result was chaotic, useless nonsense. Yet the original and target languages were closely related.

The human brain appears to be a digital computer, but no one has explained how it created and uses language. Meaning itself remains a mystery.