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Exercise 4. Topics for discussion.
Do you agree that even new translating systems are unable to render a page of text
into a different language without a bilingual editor?
Your ideas to prove your position.
Exercise 5. Translate the text into Russian and write a small composition of your
own about “modern secretary”.
Starting Time of Translation _____________
The secretary with her notebook and pencil is a well-known twentieth-century
figure, but will she still be around in the twenty-first century? When she takes down
letters from dictation, she writes in shorthand, and there are several varieties of this
script. She then has to transcribe what she has written, and often enough we hear her
mutter over her typewriter words which sound rather like “I can't read my own
shorthand”.
Instead of writing her shorthand by hand, she could use a keyboard machine
known as a “Palantype” machine. But after taking down dictation in Palantype
shorthand on her machine, she will still have to transcribe it.
A “Palantype dictionary” fed into a computer covers more than 70,000 words
recorded in a magnetic disc store. The Palantype operator takes down the dictation on
a machine linked to the computer which, interprets and transcribes it. The
transcription needs a certain amount of editing, as, even if the computer can choose
correctly between words of similar sounds such as write and right, it is still not yet
able to exercise the same degree of selectivity as an intelligent secretary. But no
doubt the day will come when the transcription is more or less perfect. The next step
will be to eliminate the Palantype operator and to give the computer ears. The
National Physical Laboratory is already conducting experiments aimed eventually to
teach a computer to recognize and understand human speech. These experiments
concentrate for the moment on recognition of vowel sounds spoken into a
microphone.
Using a computer to transcribe shorthand will be of particular help whenever
immediate transcripts are necessary. But who is going to read all the millions of
words transcribed at conferences, parliamentary debates, and so on? Why waste
human time if a computer can do it for you? In America, they are already working on
a computer system devised to scan printed matter and pick out key words in order to
give at least a brief summary of the subject matter.
Finishing Time of Translation______________
Exercise 6. Translate the text into English using key-words.
Starting Time of Translation _____________
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