In 1933 patents were filed independently in both France and Russia which used different mechanical means of translating languages through paper tape. His idea was seemingly never capitalised on. In fact, you have to go back to 1629, when French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes proposed a series of universal symbols that any language could be converted into. And, as I discovered, our interest in multilingual machines and trouble-free translation goes back much further than the 1950s. My discovery got me hunting for the origins of this technology that we now take for granted. And, had the original quote been in one of the 63 languages supported by Google, the process would have been just as quick. A quick copy and paste into Google Translate and I quickly confirmed the translation - no need for a super computer or access to the laboratories of a computing giant. “Lights flash, there is a subdued clinking and clanking, and in 10 seconds you’ve got the translation,” it said.Ĭurious to see if it had got it right, I copied the Russian text from the story and opened a new tab in my browser. The reporter, in suitably sensational language, explained “the brain” was fed a sentence in Russian to translate into English. The short Associated Press article about an IBM computer, trumpeted as the first computer capable of translation between different languages, ended with an example of its skills.
It happened to me most recently when, browsing an online newspaper archive, I came across a 1954 article in the Los Angeles Times about the dawning age of language translation by computers.
There are times when I feel as if I’m truly living in the future.
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