European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 21, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Lii Mill by computer by Carl Hartman associated press personal computers Are getting into the Iran Laling business but quirks in language will prevent them from fully replacing a human editor. American software experts say. Take or example the word  a Transl Alki program developed by telecommunications industries inc. In Vienna is. Thought the word always meant 8 commander. The computer had to be laugh thai a general housecleaning had nothing e do with a military officer running a vacuum cleaner. A s a mistake to think that you can buy a program and fire your translator said Timothy Rowe who manages translation services for telecommunications industries. It s like any word processor it improves human production it does t replace  the company is marketing Spanish into English software he English into Spanish version Wilt be available soon. Rowe Lormer translation coordinator for the National aeronautics and space administration estimates that when his program is used Tor big volumes of work it should double or triple the production of a human translator Price at the software starts at �2,875. John smart who Heads smart communications inc. In new Vork said in a Telephone interview thai his company has programs to do the same thing but they Cost at least $38,000. Asked if he knew of any other Competition for translating with a personal computer. He said there was somebody Down in Texas who had one for $500, but it did t  computers have been used in the United states to help with translations since the 1960s. Experts still speak of machine aided translation rather than machine translation in the Early 1970s, the . Air Force began producing an English version of pravda the daily newspaper of the soviet communist part which appears in russian but it has always had to use mainframe computers which Are computers with a Central processing unit. In the 1960s, Small personal computers came into use with enough storage capacity to keep All the vocabulary and grammatical rules needed to translate intelligible sentences. The new Spanish English program is recorded on a dozen floppy disks the contents of which Are transferred to the computer s own hard disk Rowe says they can be used on any computer compatible Wilh those made by International business machines As Long Asil has a hard disk to give 11 the necessary additional storage capacity the program translates Spanish to English at about so words a minute faster than most people can Type. There Aru still plenty of bugs. Spanish language instructions will not be available As Par of the program until Early in 1988. Based on a 35,000-word English dictionary its vocabulary is still far from Complete even with 11,000 word Micro dictionaries on business banking and finance jaw and aviation. Take the following sentence from last year s annual report of Iho world Bank As published in Spanish posit Emelle Mas Lardo a taiga quo Elano Pas ado fue crucial in la Historia Creciente a Las Relac Iones economics entre Las parses deaf Follador y Las poses in de Saroto. A person would translate in this Way it May be said in the future that last year was crucial in the recent history of economic relations Between developed and developing countries the computer version came Oul possibly More Lale it is Diga that Fie year passed was  More Lato of course is nol Good English bul a human translator would see the meaning quickly and change the program so that it would come out As  the machine was stumped by so Diga what grammarians Call a subjunctive farm of an irregular verb in the passive a form Hal has several different meanings in English. "there1 s learning phase1 for both the user and the program Rowe explained. During that period the user who Al this Point has to be a translator adds to the program s vocabulary. Rowe estimates that the period should last for about a Mon of if the program is used every Day longer if it is Only used occasionally. In time the user will plug a lot of the holes and the computer version should need much less cleaning up by a human translator he says. The company plans to have russian English portuguese English and French English programs available in september Ana German English in november. Rowe also is working on chinese English and is thinking about arabic English but not japanese English. Others Are developing that he said. We re playing irom our own  programs also will be available in reverse English into Spanish French and other languages. Computer translation is not mean for novels or poetry. Rowe said the More technical and repetitive the text the better it works. It s Ideal Lor something like invoices or Bills of lading where you have the same forms Over and Over with slight differences Erma Bombeck editor s note Erma Home cry s on vacation. She Lell behind some at her Tavonte columns the track was 30 meters Long. To the athletes it was mount Everest on a Slippery Day. A boy named Ren took 7 minutes 37.3 seconds to get to the end of it. In his wheelchair a 7-Ycar-old Girt became so excited she loss her Way in the race and wandered into the crowd. She was Blind a child sat Al the starting line and threw a Small Ball 30 meters he could not Aland up without crutches. I defy anyone to View a special olympics and nol be changed by it i have Vullen before about the parents of these special people. Their anger their frustration their Guill. Their doubts about themselves and their open love for this child who was Given to Thorn for a reason they Hope to find. And 1 have heard some parents of handicapped children criticize these events that to them seem cruel. Why would you put handicapped children in a competitive arena1? do they Leel the thrill of Victory the agony of defeat do they Ever know where they Are i Don t have the answers any More than hey do. But suppose just suppose the guttural cries that make no sense were really saying i did it suppose behind the vacant empty eyes the Gold medal on the red White and Blue ribbon dazzled them and meant something. Is it possible that the Mouth that could not control saliva Vas willed by he brain to Ermle bul the Muscles Ustico Ildon i do it As in any Competition. I watched the Winner and immediately went to he contestant in last place to Walch for a reaction. There was t any he did t seem to know he had lost a Gold medal Only that he was struggling for something that pushed him beyond anything he had Ever known. He never gave up. Something else was missing unlike . Olympic events them were no tears of disappointment no excuses for coming in last no rhetoric on How they did it or How they Lell. We Are a strange society. We talk to babies never knowing if they understand. We talk to animals like they Are Harvard scholars. We even talk to recordings All Day Tong. Pouring out our deepest concerns. Yet some Are ready to while off a mind that somehow got trapped inside of a body that is less than perfect. Pearl s. Buck once said the test of a civilization is in the Way that it cares ice its helpless  How much longer can Iho helpless go on making us look Good Page 16 the stars to stripes monday september 21, 19s7