Lost in Translation—Verbal Pattern Analysis
There are a number of episodes of Enterprise (such as “Vox Sola”) that describe the Universal Translator (UT) in terms of analyzing patterns in the spoken word. Few details are given regarding the process, but we can draw some reasonable conclusions. First, let’s start with the easiest task—translating between two known languages. There are already computer systems that can recognize written and even spoken words and translate them into other languages . While there are limitations to the accuracy of such systems, we should expect vast improvements as we enter the 22 nd – 24 th centuries. But what about a computer learning a new language through pattern recognition? This is also something that has already started to happen. Franz Josef Och , a specialist in computer translation, has developed systems that use statistical models allowing computers to learn new languages. The computer is given a document that has already been translated into two different languages. It then c...