Microsoft Patenting IM Translation?

theodp writes "The USPTO just published Microsoft's patent application for a Method and system for translating instant messages, in which the software giant demonstrates how an English-speaking sender can type 'Hi' in an IM and it will be translated to 'Hola' for a Spanish-speaking recipient."

Comments

Prior art?

[baywulf]

I recall Ultima Online or some other MMPORG having translation capability while chatting.

Is there prior art?

[Gortbusters.org]

I know we like to challenge all these Amazon patents that come down the pipe citing tons of prior art and how ridiculous the patent sounds...

This patent sounds like a strategic business move though and something that nobody else is doing...

Cool!

[Mark_MF-WN]

Now we get to see how badly automatic translation can be butchered. Seriously though -- it's nice to see someone trying to bridge language gaps like this. Maybe this will create a demand for higher quality automatic translation.

Do-it-yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a script that runs incoming messages via Babelfish, by using the domain address as the translation source language/country. Am I now breaking Microsoft's patent?

Published Prior Art

[yivi]

http://www.atamiri.cc/en/Atamkatiri/
From the site:

Under the auspicies of our sponsors Unión Latina, París, and Neotec, La Paz, our tiny Language Engineering R&D group has updated ATAMIRI to enable this test operation in the Web. The current version covers all 42 translation directions for the Latin languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Rumanian and also for English and German.

We are aware that during this initial operation, some translation directions are better in quality and lexico than others. Please take it with humor and trust we are permanently working to improve translation quality in the implemented languages. The system's potential capabilty has not yet been fully exploited.

"Qopuchawi" means in antique Aymara the site where "qopuchasiña" takes place; i.e. chating in a circle of persons; "qopucha" is the chat itself and "qopu" is the group of persons chating in the circle where each and every one has the same right to be heard. We intend to contribute for the Web to become a global real "qopuchawi", without language primacies which are indeed barriers.

Classic Translation Problem

[jimson]

English : "The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak"

Tranlator - English -> Russian

Russian : "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten"

Automatic translation is a classic AI problem. Shouldn't there have to be a "working" prototype prior to issueing the patent??

I have prior art on this

[hqm]

in 1997 we had a company that had a multiplayer
game with chat, and we could set it to run messages
through babelfish on the server (or whatever AltaVista's translation service was).

We even did translation twice for some games, The idea was to simulate international business negotiation, so to make the communication harder, we'd have messages translated from english to german to english, to simulate a scenario where a merger between an english and german company had taken place.