Speaking in Tongues

Desert1 writes "Carnegie Mellon's renowned computer science department has developed a system which allows for conversation between two different languages called Tongues. Currently this has been used between Croatian and English, perhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood." It's been in development for a while.

Comments

Politician-speak

[guttentag]

perhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood

You don't need a new invention to translate politician speak. Simply pipe the text of the politician-speak to the following shell script:

#! /bin/sh
echo "All I'm saying is that I keep my options open."

A "good politician" (good as in "successful," not "responsible") is intentionally vague whenever possible because that allows him to keep his options open. A vague statement that is commonly interpreted one way can later be interpreted a different way. The more details the politician provides, the greater the number of people who will disagree with him.

Politician translator

[elixx]

perhaps one day they will be able to develop one that will allow politicians to talk to normal folks and be understood

I made one of these, it loops and plays a wav file explaining that it doesnt help because it made claims solely for the reason of getting elected...