Subject: Universal translators and Education
From: Mary Harrsch (mharrsch@oregon.uoregon.edu)
Date: Thu 11 Nov 1999 - 17:28:13 MET
From: "Mary Harrsch" <mharrsch@oregon.uoregon.edu> Subject: Universal translators and Education Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 08:28:13 -0800
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I was interested to see that a Star Trek-like universal translator is now a
reality thanks to Lernout &
Hauspie:
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?991110.pivoice.htm
Just think what this device could do for higher education especially in
distance education! Trying to attain a suitable TOEFL (or other language
equivalent) score for admission to a particular program or institution could
become a thing of the past. Students could participate in global
discussions without the need to standardize on a particular language. Of
course the technology will need to get substantially cheaper (right now it's
$2,000 in large quantities) and include many more languages (With the
exception of Mandarin Chinese, the included languages were rather
Eurocentric - Russian, Middle Eastern, and African languages were noticeably
absent) but that is only a matter of time.
Mary Harrsch
Network and Information Systems Manager
College of Education
102-K Education
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
(541) 346-3554
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~mharrsch/index.htm
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