Dateline: 11/16/98

Note: This article has been updated since it was originally written. You can read the update here.

It sounds as easy as can be: Write a letter to your Spanish-speaking friend in English, then use a few mouse clicks to run the letter through a translator, and presto-changeo the letter is ready to go in Spanish.

Or is it?

In a sentence, don't count on it.

Yes, they've developed chess-playing computers that can consistently defeat all but the best players, and even the 1991 chess program I play with on my PC can beat me. But the software needed to consistently translate the written word from one language to another still has a way to go.

There are good translation programs available; links to demos of some of them are listed on my Software page. They know their verb conjugations, and they make few grammatical errors. But they all have limited vocabularies and fall short in using context to determine which word to use among those that could properly be used to define a word.

A good place to see what language software can do is at the AltaVista Translation site. Set up as a demo of sorts for Systran translation software, the site translates from English to Spanish, German, Portuguese, or French, or in reverse. You can even type in the URL of an Internet site to see a translated version, although of course any graphics remain in the original language.

Here's how AltaVista translated the first paragraph of this feature into Spanish:

¹Suena tan fácil como puede ser: Escriba una letra a su amigo de habla hispana en inglés, después utilice algunos ²tecleos del ratón para ³ejecutar la carta a través de un traductor, y ⁴el presto-changeo la carta es listo ⁵entrar en español.