Techdirt. Stories filed under "translations"

The Gutenberg eBook: Once Again, The Bible Is At The Forefront Of Publishing Technology

Leigh Beadon — Fri, 9 Mar 2012 00:00:00 PST

It's well-known that movable-type printing started (at least in the Western world) with the Gutenberg Bible, which all-but-singlehandedly ushered in a new era of literature distribution. To this day, the Bible remains one of the most-printed books of all time, and it's interesting to learn that it still plays a role in pushing publishing technology forward. The Christian missionary initiative Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN) is working to make ebook Bibles available in as many languages as possible, on as many platforms as possible—and in doing so, they're solving technical problems that few others are addressing:

Now, it turns out, the old missionary impulse is being turned towards some extremely difficult technical challenges: as Mark Howe [who works on the project] has said, "For all the issues that are still to be solved, ETEN is trying to do things that the world's biggest tech companies haven't cracked yet, such as rendering minority languages correctly on mobile devices. There's a unity among Bible translators and publishers that stands in stark contrast to the fractured, fratricidal smartphone industry." And of course, once these technical challenges are met, it won't be Bibles only that people can get on their mobile devices: whole textual worlds will open up for them.

Much of the innovation has to do with niche languages (they have translations in Potawatomie and Hawai'i Pidgin) and the developing world: ETEN is tackling translation challenges that are of low priority for many businesses since they aren't interested in entering those markets—at least not enough, or not yet. But if ETEN succeeds in making this kind of mass-internationalization easier, it will be sure to have a ripple effect as others make use of the technology. The Bible may once again be responsible for driving a communications revolution.

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DailyDirt: No 9000 Computer Has Ever Made A Mistake Or Distorted Information...

Michael Ho — Wed, 5 Oct 2011 17:00:00 PDT

The "Singularity" describes a future when technology obtains superhuman intelligence -- and when people won't be able to outwit their technological creations. So far, humans have lost to computers playing chess and Jeopardy! (and a few other games) -- but machines aren't our overlords just yet. Here are a few more datapoints pointing to better and better artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence projects are slowly encroaching into the fields of science.. and law. We'll have to automate the creation of bad lawyer jokes to keep up. [url]
Ray Kurzweil predicts automated language translations that are as good as human translations by the year 2029 I predict there will be exponential growth of hilariously bad translated text in 2030. [url]
Workplace robots could be more helpful if they just had better machine vision. Industrial robots could expand beyond repetitive tasks if they could see and recognize changes. [url]
Maybe we can distract our future computerized masters by pitting them against each other (playing Ms Pac-Man?). The only winning move is not to play... [url]
To discover more interesting robot-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

Techdirt

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DailyDirt: Games Aren't Just For Fun Anymore

Michael Ho — Tue, 4 Oct 2011 17:00:00 PDT

Gamification is a nice buzzword for "tricking" people into doing useful things. Players can be rewarded with badges or points or just the satisfaction of winning the game. And in return, the game designer filters out spam or translates text or discovers a genius who can unlock the ninth chevron. Here are a few more examples.

The game Foldit gets players to predict the structure of protein molecules, and it actually helped solve the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme in about 3 weeks. The cheat codes for the game probably helped... [url]
DARPA has a game that lets players track down submarines -- essentially teaching software for autonomous anti-submarine robots while they play. Sounds a bit like The Last Starfighter, but for submarines. [url]
From some of the same folks who brought you reCAPTCHAs, there's a game that helps you learn another language, and at the same time, help translate websites into almost any other common language. "I am a jelly donut" -- for everyone! [url]
To find some cool online games, check out what StumbleUpon has found to play. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Facebook Wants To Own Idea Of Crowdsourced Translations

Mike Masnick — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:42:00 PDT

Apparently Facebook is trying to patent the idea of crowdsourced translations of its service. The actual patent application was filed in December of 2008, but the real priority date (I believe) is December of 2007 (when I think the company filed a provisional patent).

This one caught my attention for a few reasons -- with a major one being that way back in March of 2006, some friends of mine were working on a startup called Gabbly, which did online chat, and they had amazing success with crowdsourcing translations. Now, the Facebook patent is a little more advanced, because beyond just asking people to translate, it includes a voting mechanism. But, still, the evolution of crowdsourced translations shows the total silliness of even trying to throw patents in the middle. Almost immediately after Gabbly started doing crowdsourced translations, another online chat provider, Meebo, did the same. Gabbly used a forum. Meebo tried a wiki. Others picked up on the idea and did slightly different variations, and everyone kept innovating, and no one felt the need to own the concept of crowdsourced translations or to prohibit others from doing it.

But now, suddenly, there needs to be a patent on the concept?

I'm confused how anyone could think this meets the criteria of "promoting the progress." After all, plenty of others had figured out how to do crowdsourced translations earlier, and each one improved on the process a bit as they went. It's pretty obvious that including little voting mechanisms is an obvious next step (they were already popular on sites like Digg). So what benefit does the patent provider here other than to slow down innovation? It's difficult to believe that this "innovation" would not have occurred but for the patent system -- or even that it would have taken longer to happen but for the patent system.

Hopefully, the USPTO quickly dumps this, but just the fact that Facebook and its lawyers felt this was worth patenting shows you something about the ridiculous state of the patent system today.

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Apparently, Providing Derrida's Works For Free 'Harms The Diffusion Of His Thoughts'

Mike Masnick — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:56:30 PDT

JJ points us to an interesting case down in Argentina, where a philosophy professor is being charged with criminal copyright infringement for being so bold as to create a series of websites with Spanish translations of the works of famous philosophers, after it proved difficult to impossible to find those works for purchase in Argentina. From the article, it certainly sounds as though Argentina has no educational exception for fair use. As troubling as the story is, the most bizarre statement comes from the copyright holder of the works of Jacques Derrida:

Horacio Potel has posted, over the course of several years, without authorisation, and free of charge, full versions of several of Jacques Derrida's works, which is harmful to the diffusion of his (Derrida)'s thought.

Ok. I can understanding the (incorrect and misleading) argument that posting such works should be seen as infringing, but I can't fathom an explanation that giving away the works of a philosopher online for free could possibly "be harmful to the diffusion of his thought." It would seem that the opposite would be true.

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No, Getting Users To Translate Facebook Into Other Languages Isn't Exploitation

Mike Masnick — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:33:00 PDT

A few people have sent in the recent story about how Facebook has relied on volunteer users to translate the site into other languages. That story has resulted in something of a debate from users who feel that this is somehow exploiting these translators, since they're working for "free" for a company that is supposedly valued at $15 billion (despite revenues of about $150 million). This is the same old bogus Nicholas Carr argument that this is somehow exploitation because the users aren't getting paid in cash for their labor. That, of course, is missing the point. No one is being forced or compelled to do these translations. They're doing it because they are getting compensated in their own way. It's either recognition from the community, or merely the fact that doing this enables them to use Facebook more effectively -- and that's compensation enough. For the users who do the translation, it's obviously a fair trade, otherwise, why would they take part?

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