Universal Translators?

bughunter writes "Carnegie Mellon University is announcing a 'spontaneous' translation system that allows speakers of different tongues to converse in natural language in real time. " I never liked the idea of putting aquatic creatures in my ear anyway.

Comments

How, exactly, does it handle colloquials?

[Angwe]

Okay, so it can handle colloquialisms, but what does it do with them?

Does it do a literal translation of the colloquialism? (Russian phrase "Don't go catching any flying penises in your mouth.") Or does it try to find the closest idiom in the other language? (Said Russian phrase would best be translated, "Don't act stupid, like you don't know what's going on." It's from a Russian fairy tale.)

Also, one encounters the possibility of there being no equivalent phrase. And what about weighted concepts? Many Asian languages, due to cultural influence, have an inherent extra emotional meaning attached to declarations of honor, but there is no easy way to translate this into English.

This sounds like a HUGE step forward, but I'm still gonna be skeptical and double check machines with people.