Machine translation is a quiet revolution. I am able to read people tweeting at me in Chinese (and they can translate on their end). I’ve had translated interactions before (Spanish) but Chinese seems like extra powerful thing since I can’t even guess unlike European languages.
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Careful. They're wondrously powerful for highly literal stuff. Languages are very idiomatic, usage is highly social, requiring lots of collective tacit knowledge (cf. Harry Collins, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge) that machines don't have. Take it from a duffer learning Chinese. :)
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Heh. Good luck with getting a machine to translate "ribbon farm". <grin>
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