Automatic, instantaneous translation may still be an elusive sci-fi dream. We're still some years away from a Universal Translator à la Star Trek, but significant advances in machine translation (MT) technology account, in part, for the emergence of the localization industry.
"Even with increased staffs of translators, the United States is able to put into English less than half the year's grist of scientific material from other countries," wrote David O. Woodbury ... in 1959. The article appeared when expectations were still high that machines would one day replace human translators. Expectations translated into millions of private and public funding dollars.
If the translating task of the U.S. government was overwhelming in 1959, imagine the task of translating for both private industry and public organizations in the year 2001. It's hard to get a fix on how many languages currently are used in the world. The International Standards Organization lists roughly 250 countries. Some countries may use the same language, you say. Yes, but significant differences between Mexican Spanish, the Spanish spoken in Barcelona and that spoken in Puerto Rico count if your objective is sensitive localization. Microsoft thinks the variants are important. MSWord gives me a choice of 20 Spanish-language dictionaries, 9 English-language dictionaries and 5 French-language dictionaries. Remember, too, that in some countries, there is more than one official language.
Add important dialects to the list, e.g., Joual (a Québecois dialect) and regional languages, e.g., Breton.
Consider, too, that specialties requiring precise vocabularies exist. A literary translator, unless s/he's a also a gearhead, might have a heck of a time translating a manual for line-workers at a GM plant. A technical translator might hesitate before accepting a contract to translate Pound's cantos.
Oral languages aside (which up the language count to well over 6,000) Woodbury would need a high-falutin' computer machine just to calculate the task that faces localizers in the year 2001.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we all spoke the same language? René Descartes pondered the potential of a universal language in 1629. In 1887, Dr. L. L. Zamenhof published his proposal for a universal language intended to supplement but not replace world languages: Esperanto.
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