Comments on: Scientist Designs Program to Translate Alien Languages

By: Kavin

Kavin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:22:37 +0000

SEND ME IF IT WORKS OUT!!!!!!1

By: Dan Smith

Dan Smith — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:09:31 +0000

60 human languages which are unimaginably different from any alien language that we could possibly exist.

By: Otto

Otto — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:58:01 +0000

whoops that should be @ Felipe

By: Otto

Otto — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:57:09 +0000

well that reminds a lot the movie “Mars Attack!”

Hehe…Don’t run. We are your friends.

By: Nic M.

Nic M. — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:13:42 +0000

I think a more principled objection can be made to this project: it’s not just about the sounds aliens make, since structural similarities can be easily distinguished from sounds. A series of high-pitched beeps might be an easily decodable binary language. Nor is the issue about the phenomenology of the aliens and their interests.

The problem is that linguists since the 1950s have acknowledged that language-production is under-determined by environmental input, and have concluded that much of language consists of an innate ‘universal grammar’ that particular languages then fill in with their own syntax, lexicon, morphology, semantics, etc. This is all relatively uncontroversial.

Any species with a different evolutionary history will not share this ‘universal grammar’ unless there are very specific constraints on what language can possibly be. The ’60 human languages’ sampled here are all human languages, that is, languages sharing in the evolutionary history of the species.

Just as there are many ways to evolve sight (compound? lens? pinhole?) the innate linguistic structures of alien species may or may not have anything to do with ours. It’s a neat idea, but we have no idea of how likely it is that linguistic evolution is constrained tightly enough that structures similar enough would have independently evolved.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar

By: mallory

mallory — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:02:54 +0000

That seems like a waste of resources…

By: Gauldar

Gauldar — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:40:44 +0000

TIN
FOIL
HATS
TOM
CRUISE

By: Scooter

Scooter — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:14:07 +0000

Shaka when the Walls fell. so A Universal translator isn’t far off?

By: Gerry

Gerry — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:37:08 +0000

WHAT the software programmer doesn’t take into account
IF the structure remains the same but
THEY have a different way of looking at the world and
SPEAK in ways we’ve never encountered or make
STUPID reference we know nothing about (Darmak and Jilad)…

By: Felipe Astolfi

Felipe Astolfi — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:22:23 +0000

well that reminds a lot the movie “Mars Attack!”

By: gnarley

gnarley — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:37:50 +0000

Great! Now all we have to do is find some aliens to try it out on!
Most Americans don’t even understand what their next-door neighbors are saying, who needs aliens?

E.T. did a pretty good job at speaking English. Maybe we can enlist him as a translator?

By: Larfin Jackarse

Larfin Jackarse — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:26:17 +0000

@Alex

What about just English in England? Liverpudlian to West Country, the words, the pronunciation, slang and meaning change etc

I agree with Johnald. When we can translate whales chat and they can tell us about the Martians then I will believe. (2 intertubes for who guesses the book).

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:14:55 +0000

BJN: Actually it's more complicated than that. There are languages from geographically close locations that do not share common origins. Take for instance Scottish, Irish, and English - these three languages exist in the United Kingdom only miles of each other, yet they are completely distinct from each other. The language tree is a fascinating subject. You can find out more about it at Daniel Short's website.

By: CjGuitarist82

CjGuitarist82 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:07:27 +0000

Why don’t they work on something to help us understand what People are trying to say?

By: BJN

BJN — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:08:12 +0000

Find similarities to other human languages? That’s incredibly obtuse. Human languages have innate similarities and they’re all produced by human vocal anatomy. It’s unlikely that an alien species would have evolved to make sounds even as comprehensible to us as dolphins or whales make. And to expect any structural similarity, much less any common root words from a species that evolved on another world seems unlikely in the extreme.

By: caitlin13

caitlin13 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:59:05 +0000

Elll-eee-ottt….

Also: What Johnald said. Animals are pretty alien. How about deciphering babies?

By: Johnald

Johnald — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:56:59 +0000

get back to us when it works out what another animal is saying, eg. whales…