[lojban-beginners] Re: Lojban is poor for machine translation

[Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>]

   He points out the problem of a computer knowing what the
speaker "really means" but he seems to want complete automation of the
process of inference. This is a serious problem no matter what
languages are involved. What I see as the usefulness of Lojban is in
the ability for a speaker to tell the translating computer what they
really mean so that the computer can say that in the target language.

   I have sometimes imagined two people glancing at a display
(which is handheld or clipped to their collars) while speaking
different languages to each other. Their conversation is shown on the
display, but in a series of multiple-choice selections between
different possible meanings of what they have said, and different
attitudes. This way, the computer can select which idiom in the target
language best expresses the intended meaning and attitude in which it
is expressed. It can't do this until it knows the intended meaning and
attitude, and until mind-reading technology improves, it can't know
that until the speaker tells it. So it needs a human-comprehensible
system in which to represent meaning. Lojban seems to be good at that.

-epkat

On 9/6/05, Naomi K <alien.juxtaposition@gmail.com> wrote:

"Loglans are poor MT interlinguas" - http://www.rickharrison.com/language/mtil.html

Most of you would probably know of this article, which argues that the syntax of Lojban is overly complex; sumti place structures are too rigid and counter-intuitive; that an artificial language would be more difficult to translate into natural languages as opposed to natural language to natural language translation; that required pauses are unnatural and impractical; and that the compound words are difficult for ML to translate.

What is your view of this argument?

mi'e.nei,omis.