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shadowfyr · 07-04-2007, 02:28 PM

Yeah. Supposedly there are *better* systems than Bablefish, but guess what? They are all used by high level government officials and cost so much you couldn't ever use them. They also deal with "spoken" language, not text. We badly need something adaptive for this. And that unfortunately is likely to require at least one server for every 50-100 people, at a guess, to work right. Worse, the server would probably make what ever they use to run MMOs on the server end look average in price. For now, there just isn't a useful, fast or accurate translation system, so you end up hard coding stuff, then hoping the human translator wasn't a complete dip****. Like one person mentioned up the thread a bit, you are *maybe* better watching Anime with subtitles, but personally I find them damned distracting in some cases, and its not like, unless you learn the language *properly* they don't screw them up as much or more than redoing the dialog in English. And some songs they translate from them... Gah! Its like listening to someone that intentionally dug through a dictionary for the most indirect and vague word possible in each case, then pounded it into the worst possible English sentence structure. Something that should have come out as, "I wander in the deep forest.", might end up being, "In the not shallow trees I vacation."... I mean WTF?? I sometimes can't believe Japanese people mangle their own works that badly when translating, never mind some half wit working for an English company. And again, subtitles are "not" any better.

Put simply, text is an imprecise media. That is what some people, sometimes infuriatingly, like about it. Translation is *supposed* to be as precise as possible, but usually isn't. The result is all too often like having a blind person *feel* a replica of the Mona Lisa and then *translate* that into a copy of Dogs Playing Poker. We need better language systems. We also need better AI imho, but that is a similar can of worms. Mean while, MMOs *are* getting the later, since its a lot easier to code AI to handle *physics*, than text, and... well, they have the same problem MUDs do with the language part.

07-04-2007, 02:28 PM	#28
shadowfyr Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 310	Re: Future MUD directions Yeah. Supposedly there are better systems than Bablefish, but guess what? They are all used by high level government officials and cost so much you couldn't ever use them. They also deal with "spoken" language, not text. We badly need something adaptive for this. And that unfortunately is likely to require at least one server for every 50-100 people, at a guess, to work right. Worse, the server would probably make what ever they use to run MMOs on the server end look average in price. For now, there just isn't a useful, fast or accurate translation system, so you end up hard coding stuff, then hoping the human translator wasn't a complete dip***. Like one person mentioned up the thread a bit, you are maybe* better watching Anime with subtitles, but personally I find them damned distracting in some cases, and its not like, unless you learn the language properly they don't screw them up as much or more than redoing the dialog in English. And some songs they translate from them... Gah! Its like listening to someone that intentionally dug through a dictionary for the most indirect and vague word possible in each case, then pounded it into the worst possible English sentence structure. Something that should have come out as, "I wander in the deep forest.", might end up being, "In the not shallow trees I vacation."... I mean WTF?? I sometimes can't believe Japanese people mangle their own works that badly when translating, never mind some half wit working for an English company. And again, subtitles are "not" any better. Put simply, text is an imprecise media. That is what some people, sometimes infuriatingly, like about it. Translation is supposed to be as precise as possible, but usually isn't. The result is all too often like having a blind person feel a replica of the Mona Lisa and then translate that into a copy of Dogs Playing Poker. We need better language systems. We also need better AI imho, but that is a similar can of worms. Mean while, MMOs are getting the later, since its a lot easier to code AI to handle physics, than text, and... well, they have the same problem MUDs do with the language part.