Abstract
This research paper evaluates whether people can communicate with people speaking in foreign languages through the mediation of translation applications. In a bid to perform this task, the paper makes a comprehensive analysis about the strategies that could be applied when translating. Furthermore, it will describe the mechanisms involved in facilitating the translation. It is, therefore, apparent that this research paper will concentrate on showing how translation application can mediate speaking to people with distinct languages.
Introduction
Development of a language is an ability that must occur in everybody’s life. There are numerous procedures that can be applied to understand the development of languages (Hausser, 2001). One of these methods involves computational approaches. Computational linguistic is a broad concept derived from various disciplines (Hausser, 2001).
The concept utilizes statistical procedures in structuring natural languages through computing. Some of the fields that these genres arise from are philosophy, investigators, speech experts, and cognitive scientist among others that contribute to accumulation of computation language knowledge.
Literature
Young learners are exposed to the concept of information acquisition at an early age. However, the society is biased when exposing the young learners. This is because it tends to favor positive information over negative information. In this process, learners are only aware about positive information.
This is evidenced through the knowledge provided when they are exposed to total blackout. It appears during matters relating to negative information. This fact, therefore, limits the application of language computational models. In addition, it has been a common practice that a language can be learnt by introducing the content in small bits first. This is followed by increasing it gradually to favor optimal learning process (Chan & Pollard, 2001).
This concept has been applied in developing the robots with potentials that are almost similar to human beings. Also, this is applied to test the realities of linguistics theories. However, some people argue that disseminating bits information prolongs the learning process of the children.
These theories argue that a person continues to develop linguistically when the natural network plays the role of perceiving and understanding (Grishman, 1986). Through the application of computational linguistic approaches, researchers have discovered advanced systems that have the capacity to foresee future development in linguistics. Additionally, they explain the development of the modern language. Some tools that have been applied include Prince Equation and poyla dynamics.
Translation from one language to another is guided by grammatical structures that govern the spoken and written language. This means that one will only archive a successful translation process if various forms of knowledge are applied. These forms of knowledge define grammatical rules that govern a language. Translation will require understanding of the two involved languages.
The concept of language development has influenced the act of applying translation. A child learns overtime how to communicate effectively using a given language.
The reason behind a child understanding language and ability to decode information has been the guiding factor to the development and implementation of translation (Lehmann, 2008). The logic is based on how the various forms of knowledge interact and produce a string that can be understood and interpreted by the brain.
Analysis of Practicability in Developing Translators
Translation mechanisms are based on applied computational concept when developing translation software and other applications. There are various forms of knowledge that are considered when developing these software and applications. This should be applied in accordance to the details described in the consequent sections of this research paper. This knowledge lays the basis of understanding how one can communicate to other people without any understanding of another language.
Basic Translation Application Functioning
Bi-translation was considered when translating from one language to another. The first step would be to develop the language structure of the two languages that are involved. This will be done by the languages specialists.
The development of this structure will focus essentially on adherence to Phonetic, phonological, semantic, and syntactic knowledge. This is because the knowledge is concerned with the particulate languages. Adherence to the grammatical rules of the two languages will be the basic elements of achieving optimal efficiency when translating the two languages.
This implies that a person will encounter similar problems to those expected in case s/he spoke the language. Consequently, a person must have adequate skills and manpower to facilitate application of all the knowledge in a manner upholding grammatical correctness with the aim of making sure that the target message is delivered.
The next phase will involve developing the structures of the two languages in the computer application. These applications will be used for the translation. At this point, computer scientists, philosophers, artificial intelligence experts, psycholinguistics, cognitive physiologist, neuroscientist, logicians, and mathematicians among others will help in advancing the structures of the languages (Gelbukh, 2011). The advances will be performed in a manner that will be useful to the targeted party.
This phase will involve developing a platform on how the two languages will be interacting. One communicators will be feeding the computer with contents using known language. On the other hand, the other person has to see it in a language that s/he understands. The question will be how to integrate the two languages such that translation is achieved without distorting the meaning.
This is where artificial intelligence will play a vital role of harmonizing the communication between the two languages so that they can exchange the meaning appropriately. In other words, the machine will have an inter-language interface that helps the two languages to interact and determine the wording of the statements that are being translated. The modality of this interaction will, therefore, call for collective efforts from all the disciplines that are involved.
Once these modalities are developed, it becomes possible to exchange information through such an application. Pragmatic knowledge, disclosure knowledge, and world knowledge are put into action. This means that once one party writes a sentence within a certain context, the other will receive the sentence in the other language just as the writer intendeds.
Descriptions will be possible because the application can accord the rightful meaning of every word through context word evaluation. This involves contextual application of the word. Usage of world knowledge, therefore, becomes possible due to the involvement of different contexts. This will facilitate effective translation since the machine will recognize the context through the structure of the words.
Translation Mechanism
The concepts of localization and internationalization are the guiding factors in translation mechanism. Localization of translation mechanism takes place in two phases. The first stage entails utilization of the translation structure defined by artificial intelligence. It establishes the procedures that the translation process follows.
This establishes an interphase between the two languages. Moreover, it works on the basis that the two languages will present the contents in a defined manner favoring translation. This implies that language content is presented in strings that are remitted to other language structures for translation.
A string is a pattern that a language presents the building blocks given in a text. A string comprises of many patterns. This is because a language is not exhausted. An application will have a string pattern adapter used to streamline the patterns for effective handling. String patterns adopter categorizes strings into classes.
The classifications help in replication of patterns that have closely related patterns. This means that one class of the string is not presented as the entire language. Moreover, a string is presented in structural rules relating to it. For instance, assuming that a sentence has a noun and a verb, the string pattern generated will be accompanied by rules relating to the combination of words. These words will be from the two classes and the world knowledge associated when enhancing contextualization.
The final stage involves the actual localization of the translated words (Bowker, 2002). This means that the language content made on one side is translated successfully and adopted by the other party. This aspect of translation is achieved when the translation of a language content relays an intended meaning. Furthermore, it implies that when one language presents an ambiguous string to the other language, the translated meaning differ from the exact intensions. Consequently, the actual localization will not be achieved.
Internationalization is the individual understanding ability facilitated by translation. When a successful translation is performed, it is defined as internationalization of a local language. The effectiveness of the mechanism is not based on the ability to convey the intended message.
Instead, it is the ability to contextualize information in the other culture. This ensures attainment of common ground between the two parties. A combination of internationalization and localization is the baseline dictating the interaction of two languages. This is because the two concepts define the extent of interaction between the parties involved. This happens through mutual respect to each party culture.
The translation mechanism has a structured course to be followed. First, the source sentence is written in accordance to grammatical structural rules of the local language. Syntactic analysis will be carried out to pave the way for syntactic parse tree. Afterwards, syntactic transformation is carried out leading to second language generation that results to the production of targeted sentence. This process takes place in accordance to the modelling. This facilitates realization of the desired outcome (Quah, 2006).
Translation mechanism strategies
Knowledge based approach
This method relies on stereotyped domain knowledge in a context involving automation of the written text. The method is affected by translation requirement that advocates for execution of syntactic analysis. This analysis has good and bad effects to the quality of translation under this approach.
The key advantage associated to this approach is arises from its ability to create a platform of multilingual translation (Quah, 2006). In addition, this approach facilitates grammatical transfer of language content to concrete parsing and technique generation. A parser is used to generate semantic representation through mapping of the source language while the generator matches the representation to the desired language.
Moreover, this method facilitates translation of the local language into many languages. This is because only one parser is required to generate different languages. This means that the generators have to be based on different languages. This approach is essential in multilingual translation because its development can be traced.
Figure1: Shows the flow of translation under knowledge bases approach
This method provides the principle stages that a text passes for translation purposes. This method is only applied during paired language translations. This means that it is used when one needs to translate from one language into another. In addition, this method does not require linguistic theories to function. It relies on utilizing morphological analysis, dictionaries and word processing mechanism to carry out translation process. Figure 2 shows the flow of translation under direct strategy approach.
Figure 2 shows the flow of translation under direct strategy approach
Transfer Translation strategy
Under this method, the text is translated is by passing through abstract internal representation. This will facilitates information transfer at both structural and lexical levels of the two languages. Translation then occurs immediately after completing information transfer for the two levels. Three dictionaries can be applied in this method. The three dictionaries are Structural level dictionary, lexical level transfer dictionary and bilingual dictionary (Quah, 2006).
Interlingua Transfer strategy
This method involves developing independent multilingual dictionary. This serves as a universal dictionary for translating languages in all levels. This method requires N source texts and M translated text to function only. This means that the required amount of transfer blocks is the multiple of the two base blocks. N analyzers are used to work alongside M generators in this translation (Quah, 2006).
Translation Applications
Translation application is a computer program that can produce a text in a different language from the input language. There are various known translations programs that include Language Ware Access Professional, Globalink Power Translator Professional, and Intergraph Transcend Version among others (Bowker, 2002).
The translation mechanism of this application takes various forms. Semantic invariance is one way that a translation mechanism utilizes in the translation process. This methodology involves preservation of the invariant meaning during translation. Pragmatic invariance is the other methodology.
It focuses on preserving the intentions of the sender. The application must preserve the intention of the sender in order to uphold effectiveness of the translation. Structural invariance ensures that syntactic structure is adhered (Bowker, 2002). This ensures that the string patterns are unaltered. Lexical invariance facilitates ‘one to one’ word mapping. This is essential in deducing the right word to match with the input word. Spatial invariance safeguards external traits that are associated with the words in the text.
Communication Using Translation Application
There are two ways that translation can be achieved and used. One method involves the use of human interpreters. This could be on the site where it is supported by computer application. The other method uses automated interpretation technologies. Under the automated interpretation technologies, the application that interprets the content is inbuilt (Quah, 2006). There are the three ways that automated translation technology could be used.
One-Way Technology
This technology facilitates passing of information from one part to another using pre-corded multilingual phrases. The application has an inbuilt warehouse of these phrases (Bowker, 2002). The person relaying a message chooses the phrase to be used basing on operational guidelines. This method is disadvantageous because it does not facilitate feedbacks.
Limited two-way technology
This method allows the person conveying information to use structured phrases and sentences to send the message. The sender feeds the message to the application program using a local language. However, the recipient receives an understandable language. The method is more effective than one-technology way because it facilities limited feedback from the information recipient. This is because the inbuilt data warehouse contains response phrase (Bowker, 2002). However, this method is not effective because it does not allow respondents to express feeling in their own ways.
Full two-way technology
It is the best developed and most effective method. It facilitates the interpretation of language soon after feeding sound to the interpretation software. It facilitates a two-way communication between the parties involved. The technology is not only applicable in computers, but also to specialized headsets (Bowker, 2002). It is used commonly in international conferences.
Conclusion
The world today has experienced increased interaction between people who do not share a common language. The need to facilitate effective communication between people has resulted to the development of translation application that assist them in their communication when performing their activities.
These translation applications abide to the developed language structure (Gelbukh, 2011). This consolidates the fact that translating a language requires a person to understand and speak it. The grammatical understanding has to be built in this system.
This research has addressed the following question. Can we communicate with people who have foreign language using translation applications? The answer to this question is ‘yes’. We can communicate to people who speak a foreign language using translation applications. The research paper has squarely covered the basics that are necessary to achieve that goal. It is factual to argue that communication is no longer a significant barrier to human activities.
References
Bowker, L. (2002). Computer-aided translation technology: a practical introduction. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Chan, S., & Pollard, D. E. (2001). An encyclopaedia of translation: Chinese-English, English-Chinese. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
Gelbukh, A. (2011). Computational linguistics and intelligent text processing 12th international conference cicling proceedings. Berlin: Springer.
Grishman, R. (1986). Computational linguistics: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hausser, R. R. (2001). Foundations of computational linguistics: human-computer communication in natural language (2nd ed.). Berlin: Springer.
Lehmann, C. (2008). Morphology, Part 2 an International Handbook on Inflection and Word-formation. Berlin: Walter
Quah, C. K. (2006). Translation and technology. Houndmills [England: Palgrave Macmillan.