RE: [HCDX] CIA monitoring article

["Andy Sennitt" <andys@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Don Moore wrote:

> Interesting article on Yahoo news about techniques used by the
> CIA to monitor foreign broadcasts. Too bad a few of these aren't
> for sale. I suspect there would be some buyers on this list...
>
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010302/tc/cia_dc_1.html

Facinating stuff, and I suspect that the technology will filter down to the
general marketplace in due course. I'm quite impressed by the very
affordable Systran translation software, and I routinely use it to quickly
check media news items in French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish to
see if they're worth using for Media Network.

But I have my doubts about placing too much reliance on machine translation.
In the the examples given, it's obvious enough that something doesn't make
sense and needs checking. But the majority of translation problems involve
more subtle things. For example, I've studied Russian, where many words mean
different things according to the context in which they're used. Programming
that sort of information into computers must be a nightmare. Past efforts
have shown this. The most famous example is rendering "out of sight, out of
mind" as "invisible idiot".

Andy Sennitt

Although I work for Radio Netherlands, I am participating here on an
individual basis. Opinions expressed are my own, and do not necessarily
reflect the official position of Radio Netherlands.


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