Posted: May 03, 2011 9:33 am
In India alone there are 22 official languages recognised by the Constitution and over 120 that are spoken by at least 10,000 people. Good luck with writing translation software that will bring all of those together, especially in poor towns and villages where many inhabitants don't even have access to basic literacy.
Most Indians have to learn Hindi in addition to their native language just in order to have access to their own national cultural and political life. I don't see them agitating for portable software to translate Hindi into Malayalam, to take just one example. So extend this concept to global cultural, political and scientific life. Is it easier to conduct this in one (or maybe two) globally common language(s) or to force everyone to carry a device that will translate several thousand languages into every other language?
Even if you only did this for 1,000 languages, do you know how many combinations that entails? Do the factorial of 1,000 and figure out how much computing power you would need. Clue: it's fucking astronomical.
Most Indians have to learn Hindi in addition to their native language just in order to have access to their own national cultural and political life. I don't see them agitating for portable software to translate Hindi into Malayalam, to take just one example. So extend this concept to global cultural, political and scientific life. Is it easier to conduct this in one (or maybe two) globally common language(s) or to force everyone to carry a device that will translate several thousand languages into every other language?
Even if you only did this for 1,000 languages, do you know how many combinations that entails? Do the factorial of 1,000 and figure out how much computing power you would need. Clue: it's fucking astronomical.