From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Fri May 28 00:04:10 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sat, 29 May 1993 20:47:59 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5320; Sat, 29 May 93 20:47:06 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2597; Sat, 29 May 93 20:48:18 EDT Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 04:04:10 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: John Hodges on "Why Lojban?" X-To: iad@COGSCI.ED.AC.UK X-Cc: conlang@diku.dk, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: Message-ID: I tend to agree with you Ivan, than 't-boxes' are in general a matter for the very distant future. But note that John is specifically proposing that the translation direction be from Lojban to nat lang, and not the reverse direction. He also specifically notes that crude, if syntactically straightforward, translations, are an acceptable result. That combination is PROBABLY, if not definitely, readily achievable with current trnsaltion technology, given that Nora's earlier Loglan subset and current Lojban glosser are almost up to that standard with relatively minimal work on a to-English basis. The more obvious criticism, though, is how the Lojbanist/traveller will understand the native's responses, which would presumably not be in Lojban unless it really achieved universal language-hood, in which case the t-box isn;t needed. Otherwise the t-box has to go both directions, and getting a computer in a t-box to unambiguously handle Enfglish or Russian speech is a distinctly more difficult problem (not to mention the translation problem). lojbab