Internet Translation Services

Svetlana questions Grigori ’s terminology  in  a report he is writing.

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Svetlana:  I wonder if you are actually writing a report on “Machine Translation?”

Grigori: Hmm?

Svetlana: I mean, you are analyzing results of translations done by Excite, Babel Fish, Google and so on, but these are what we might call Internet Translation Services.

Grigori: Not MT?

Svetlana: MT is a mashup of hardware and software. Internet Translation Service is, on the other hand, a kind of user interface. You just type something in and translate it into another language. See, if you google it, you get all these references for ITS: Excite, Babel Fish are there but also Systran, Dictionary.com, Applied Language, WorldLingo, these names they come up with…

Grigori: Interesting what other services are tied to these translation sites. Here’s one advertising castles for sale in eastern Europe. And another one advertizing second passports.

Svetlana: Translation is a gateway. Reminds me of a nice homespun site that used to carry notices of upcoming conferences on language and linguistics. Run by a character called Roy. Nice chap, and he added a link to Russian aircraft for sale. We all have another string to our bow.

Grigori: We all have something else we’d rather be doing.

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