Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian Translator Created

DrJackson writes "A new online translator that can translate Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and Egyptian hieroglyphics (1 of the 3 types anyway) has been developed. This is the first time I ever saw a translator for cuneiform. Something like this would be great for translating interesting historical records like the Amarna Letters."

Comments

bo-ring

[heptapod]

wake me when they can do pnakotic

Uh...right.

[piyamaradus]

As a technologist who also reads ancient Egyptian (from college) as well as Akkadian (== Assyrian & Babylonian, with slightly different scripts over the years) and Sumerian, I can fairly readily call shenanigans on this one. The sophistication of translation here is about as deep as the 'your name in hieroglyphs' stuff you find in museum stores and the horrid Dover reprints of Budge's books.

And don't even get me started on Sumerian. Professional Sumerologists still can't render half of the agglutinative morphemes that appear in Sumerian verbs.

Re:Uh...right.

[Rebelgecko]

As a technologist who also reads ancient Egyptian (from college) as well as Akkadian (== Assyrian & Babylonian, with slightly different scripts over the years) and Sumerian, I can fairly readily call shenanigans on this one. The sophistication of translation here is about as deep as the 'your name in hieroglyphs' stuff you find in museum stores and the horrid Dover reprints of Budge's books.

And don't even get me started on Sumerian. Professional Sumerologists still can't render half of the agglutinative morphemes that appear in Sumerian verbs. I definitely agree with you on translating difficulties. When your last sentence was translated into English, most of it came out as gibberish!

Re:Uh...right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second that with the note that one should look at the sources that McCormack is using for his history of Sumer section. Citing Woolley is great, he is one of archeology's giants, but I must respectfully question drawing conclusions from Waddell for any language model / history. His model of hyperdiffusionism has been long discredited among scholars. I will also note the general lack of citation of recent scholarship in McCormack's pages or any recent work linguistic work by reputable scholars.
One should point out that our understanding of Sumerian history and language, especially, has changed extensively since the 1930's.
I think an online English -> Sumerian / Akkadian reference is a great idea. The EPSD from the University of Pennsylvania is a terrific reference along those lines, for example.
That being said, even if the scholarship in the engine were sound, machine translation is also in its infancy for languages that we _fully_ understand, let alone Sumerian whose grammatical structure is highly debated among scholars.

Monty Python

[JoshWurzel]

Now I can finally find out what the capital of Assyria is! I hope its not "aaaarrrrhhhh"

Oh good!

[Chairboy]

I've been meaning to write a 'Hello world' Nam-shub...

Test with simple phrases yield poor results

[Darth_Keryx]

I tried a few basic phrases where I know (from graduate school) what the Akkadian should be. "If a man kills..." (shumma awilum idak, if I recall) from Hammurapi's Code. "For the gods" (ana ilani). "An adoption tablet" (tuppi maruti, all over the place especially in Nuzi tablets). Only a few words were represented correctly, and surely through the simplistic "this English word matches" method. I was shocked that even "kills" and "gods" were not rendered correctly. The script on the site tells me that terribly outdated sources were used. Tried the same for a few very simple Egyptian phrases. "The city is in joy" (all over the place in Gardiner, 3rd ed) (result not too bad on this one). "The priest hears the god". What? No flag (n-ch-r, sign for deity)? Few years ago I researched how to write out "God is Love" and "God loves you" (for Vacation Bible School, the theme was archeology-past), and I scoured Gardiner to make sure I got the grammar just right. Oh heck not even close - only correct part was mr for love, but should be mrwt for the noun. Don't get me on the Sumerian tests. Really disgustingly simple stuff from temple dedicatory inscriptions (I had just one semester of Sumerian). Well... got dingir for "god" but that's about it. Sorry. 10/10 for good intentions... but minus several million for the results. Sorry. 10/10 for good intentions... but minus several million for the results.

The Nature of Dead Languages

[photomonkey]

As a person who studied Latin at the high school and collegiate level, I know that much of what is 'worth' translating academically has already been translated by other academics. Sure, a scholar might be able to come up with his own unique translation, but that is not something that can be done by a machine.

A dear friend of mine is an Egyptologist, and I know his struggles in translating writings from different regions of the empire, let alone differences dynasty to dynasty.

Since even the best computer translators (and I mean the corporately deployed ones, not just freebie Web stuff like BabelFish) mangle all but the simplest Spanish, French and German (I can't say anything about Asian languages, as I can't speak or read any) phrases, how can we expect any level of reliability in translating languages that even leading scholars struggle with?

Besides, the most difficult part of translating anything stems from the fact that any person seldom speaks or writes as he should. The rules of language are bent, twisted and altered into regional dialects and strings of ethnic and cultural phraseology. In the Spanish language, a word may take on one meaning in Mexico, and entirely another in Spain. Nevermind the fact that, at least in my experience, Spanish Spanish is significantly different from Mexican Spanish. And those are two languages that diverged only a matter of hundreds of years ago, as opposed to the thousands often seen in dead languages.

This is very interesting to me, but until we have widely-available computers that can understand the subtle nuances of tone, inflection, humor and colloquialisms, the computer translation will never best, or even come close to a careful academic translation, or a translation done by a human fluent in both languages, if not academically trained in both languages.

Re:I didn't think they'd cracked modern languages.

[Nazlfrag]

Bird bird eye feather snake bird squiggly, you insensitive clod!