Machines, Lost In Translation: The Dream Of Universal Understanding

Developing a universal translator means teaching a computer to think like a human. Developing a universal translator means teaching a computer to think like a human. It was early 1954 when computer scientists, for the first time, publicly revealed a machine that could translate between human languages. It became known as the Georgetown-IBM experiment: an "electronic brain" that translated sentences from Russian into English. The scientists believed a universal translator, once developed, would not only give Americans a security edge over the Soviets but also promote world peace by eliminating language barriers.