Lingua ex machina: Computer-mediated communication and the tower of babel

Configurations

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 61-88

  Gunkel, David J ^a  

^a NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 2042502885     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.1999.0008     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. Jerry Stratton, "What Is the Net?" .
2. Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, trans. James Fentress (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), p. 1.
3. Terry Winograd, "Computer Software for Working with Languages," Scientific American 251 (1984): 131.
4. Michael Heim, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 36. See also .
5. Eco, Search (above, n. 2), p. 73.
6. Heim, Metaphysics (above, n. 4), p. 93.
7. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1948), p. 12.
8. As quoted in Eco, Search (above, n. 2), p. xii.
9. Heim, Metaphysics (above, n. 4), p. 94.
10. Wiener, Cybernetics (above, n. 7), p. 12.
11. Bruce Schuman, Utopian Computer Networking, (1988), p. 6.
12. Warren Weaver, "The New Tower," in Machine Translation of Languages, ed. William N. Locke and A. Donald Booth (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1955), p. vii.
13. See "Translation Technology Alternatives," (1996).
14. For an introduction to and historical overview of the discipline of machine translation, see W. John Hutchins, Machine Translation: Past, Present, Future (New York: Wiley, 1986);
15. W. John Hutchins and Harold L. Somers, An Introduction to Machine Translation (New York: Academic Press, 1992);
16. Doug Arnold, Lorna Balkan, R. Lee Humphreys, Siety Meijer, and Louisa Sadler, Machine Translation: Introductory Guide (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994) (also available on-line at ).
17. Muriel Vasconcellos, "Machine Translation: Translating the Languages of the World on a Desktop Computer Comes of Age," BYTE 18:1 (1993): 152 (also available on-line at).
18. L. Chris Miller, "Babelware for the Desktop: Personal Computer and Workstation Translation Software Offers You the Most Affordable Access to MT," BYTE 18:1 (1993): 177 (also available on-line at ).
19. Erwin Reifler, AfT (Seattle: University of Washington, 1951), p. 1.
20. Marshall McLuhan was canonized as the "patron saint" of the telematic world in the initial issue of Wired magazine (July 1993), and the name of Saint Marshall has been invoked in the masthead of every subsequent issue.
21. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), p. 80.
22. Acts of the Apostles 2: 7-8.
23. In her article on machine translation, Muriel Vasconcellos misspells Douglas Adams's "Babel Fish" as "babblefish." In doing so, she (either inadvertently or not) puts into play the linguistic confusion that has been determined to be the legacy of Babel and the object of translation.
24. Vasconcellos, "Machine Translation" (above, n. 14), p. 152.
25. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (New York: Pocket Books, 1979), pp. 59-60.
26. A similar device, actually named the Universal Translator, has been incorporated into the standard equipment of Star Fleet in the science-fiction television series Star Trek. According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Universal Translator is a "device used to provide real-time two-way translation of spoken languages" (Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, and Debbie Mirek, The Star Trek Encyclopedia [New York: Pocket Books, 1994], p. 361).
27. In the original series, which made its debut in the mid-1960s, the Universal Translator was a hand-held device about the size of a standard flashlight (a graphic representation can be found in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual [New York: Ballantine, 1975], p. T0:03:02:04).
28. In the sequel, Star Trek: The Next Generation (as well as its spin-offs, Deep Space Nine and Voyager), the Universal Translator is incorporated as a piece of software residing in the ship's main computer. According to the Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual, "the Universal Translator is an extremely sophisticated computer program that is designed to first analyze the patterns of an unknown form of communication, then to derive a translation matrix to permit real-time verbal or data exchanges" (Rich Sternbach and Michael Okuda, Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual [New York: Pocket Books, 1991], p. 101).
29. Contemporary MT programs rely on a permanent, resident knowledge source. "The most essential of the knowledge sources Is the dictionary-a file of records containing the words and phrases of the source language against which the input text must be matched" (Vasconcellos, "Machine Translation" [above, n. 14], p. 152). The Universal Translator of Star Fleet derives its knowledge source or "translation matrix" on the fly through an analysis of a representative language sample; it is therefore just as effective in translating a known language, like Klingon or Romulan, as it is translating a new and unknown idiom, like the languages of the Com or Kason.
30. The Universal Translator is a remarkable piece of technology for several reasons. First, it is virtually invisible. It is not present in the frame as a piece of equipment. This is extremely curious for a technoporn series like Star Trek: The Next Generation, which subsists as a home-shopping network of futuristic gadgetry. Second, because of this invisibility, the Universal Translator is ubiquitous and omnipresent: it not only functions for ship-to-ship communications but also operates as an interpersonal translator when the away-team has left the starship and is engaged in negotiations with an alien lifeform. This ubiquity is generally explained by the corn-badge, which Star Fleet personnel wear on their uniform, and which supposedly ties all crew members into a communications network with the shipboard computer and the universal translation subroutine (see Okuda, Okuda, and Mirek, Star Trek Encyclopedia, p. 361).
31. However, translation services appear to be available even in those rare cases when the corn-badge has been confiscated and/or disabled. Finally, the Universal Translator appears to be without operational limits: it does not seem to require any processing time, or to rely on previously entered data for making its linguistic calculations.
32. Quoted in Eco, Search (above, n. 2), p. 197.
33. Search Ibid., p. 199.
34. Luigi Heilmann, "J. J. Becher: Un precursore délia traduzione meccanica," De homme 7-8 (1963): 131-134;
35. Hutchins, Machine Translation (above, n. 13).
36. For information on these systems, see the following: CITAC, ; Globalink, ; PENSEE, .
37. Reifler, MT (above, n. 16) p. 1.
38. Klaus Schubert, "Esperanto as an Intermediate Language for Machine Translation," in Computers in Translation: A Practical Appraisal, ed. John Newton (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 81.
39. A. Donald Booth, L. Brandwood and J. Cleave, Mechanical Resolution of Linguistic Problems (London: Buttemorth, 1958).
40. Eco, Search (above, n. 2), pp. 346-347.
41. See Carnegie Mellon University, "Center for Machine Translation-Projects," (1996).
42. Gavin Edwards, "Dejputx>gh hov rur qabllil " Wired 4:8 (1996): 84-93 (also available on-line at ).
43. Emile Delavenay, An Introduction to Machine Translation (New York: Praeger, 1960), p. 47.
44. Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Language and Information: Selected Essays on Their Theory and Application (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1964), p. 162.
45. Language and Information: Selected Essays on Their Theory and Application Ibid.
46. Hutchins, Machine Translation (above, n. 13), p. 28.
47. Warren Weaver, "Translation," in Machine Translation of Languages, ed. William N. Locke and A. Donald Booth (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1955), p. 23.
48. James J. Bono, Tlie Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modem Science and Medicine, vol. 1, Ficino to Descartes (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), p. 185.
49. See Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 251-277.
50. Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror: Denida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 88.
51. Jacques Derrida, "Des Tours de Babel" in Différence in Translation, ed. and Irans. Joseph F. Graham (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 165.
52. Hutchins and Somers, Introduction to Machine Translation (above, n. 13), p. 1.
53. For a critical investigation of the practical limits of current MT technology, see Muriel Vasconcellos, Technology as Translation Strategy (Binghamton: SUNY Press, 1988);
54. Newton, Computers in Translation (above, n. 29);
55. Hutchins and Somers, Introduction to Machine Translation.
56. Alan K. Melby, The Possibility of Language (Philadelphia: John Benjamin, 1995).
57. Derrida, "Des Tours de Babel" (above, n. 42), p. 171.
58. Aristotle, De interpretation, in Tlte Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 16a5-8.
59. McLuhan, Understanding Media (above, n. 18), p. 80.
60. Understanding Media Ibid.
61. Jaron Lanier, "A Portrait of the Young Visionary," (1988) (also available on the Jaron Lanier homepage, ).
62. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), p. 32.
63. The Gutenberg Galaxy Ibid.
64. McLuhan, Understanding Media (above, n. 18), p. 80.
65. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, in Basic Writings of Saint Tlwmas Aquinas, vol. 1, éd. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House, 1945), p. 991.
66. William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace Books, 1984), p. 52.
67. Neuromancer Ibid., p. 5.
68. On technology, the body, and the dream of incorporeal interaction, see Donna Haraway. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991);
69. N. Katherine Hayles, "The Seduction of Cyberspace," in Rethinking Technologies, ed. Verena Andermatt Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 173-190;
70. Mark Dery, Flame Wars: Tlie Discourse of Cyberculture (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994);
71. Allucquere Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995);
72. Mark Poster, The Second Media Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995);
73. Rob Shields, Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies (London: Sage, 1996);
74. N. Katherine Hayles, "Embodied Virtualities: Or How to Put Bodies Back into the Picture," in Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, ed. Mary Anne Moser and Douglas MacLeod (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 1-28;
75. David J. Gunkel and Ann Hetzel Gunkel, "Virtual Geographies: The New Worlds of Cyberspace," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14:2 (1997): 123-137;
76. David J. Gunkel, "Virtually Transcendent: Cyberculture and the Body," Journal of Mass Media Ethics 13:2 (1998): 111-123.
77. Gareth Branwyn, "The Desire to Be Wired," Wired 1:4 (1993): 1 (also available online at ).
78. Chris Hables Gray, "Science Fiction Becomes Military Fact," in ne Cyborg Handbook, ed. idem (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 104-105.
79. Naval Health Research Center's Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory, "Neural Human-Systems Interface," (1996).
80. L. A. Fanvell and E. Donchin, "Talking off the Top of Your Head: Toward a Mental Prosthesis Utilizing Event-Related Brain Potentials," Electroencephalography and Clinical Neuwphyiiology 70 (1991): 510-523.
81. Jonathan R. Wolpaw, D. J. McFarland, G. W. Neat, and C. A. Forneris, "An EECBased Brain-Computer Interface for Cursor Control," Electroenceplialograpliy and Clinical Neurophysiology 78 (1993): 252-259.
82. Gert Pfurtscheller, Doris Flotzinger, and Joachim Kalcher, "Brain-Computer Interface: A New Communication Device for Handicapped Persons," Journal of Microcomputer Applications 16 (1993): 293-299.
83. Andrew Wright, "On Designing a Brain-Computer Interface: After All, Computers Were Once Science Fiction, Too," (1993), p. 3.
84. Toby Howard, "Beyond the Big Barrier," Personal Computer World, February 1996, p. 1 (also available on-line at ).
85. Andrew Pollack, "Computers Are Starting to Take Humans' Wishes as Their Commands," New York Times, February 9, 1993, p. 2 (also available on-line at ).
86. See Wolpaw et al., "EEC-Based Brain-Computer Interface" (above, n. 62);
87. Pfurtscheller, Flotzinger, and Kalcher, "Brain-Computer Interface" (above, n. 63);
88. J. McFarland, G. W. Neat, R. F. Read, and J. R. Wolpaw, "An EEC-Based Method for Graded Cursor Control," Psychobiology 21:1 (1993): 77-81.
89. Farwell and Donchin, "Talking off the Top of Your Head" (above, n. 61).
90. Pollack, "Computers Are Starting" (above, n. 66), p. 2.
91. Branwyn, "Desire to Be Wired" (above, n. 58), p. 3.
92. Hank Hogan, "Wetware," High Technology Careers Magazine, (1995), p. 2.
93. John von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), p. 80.
94. Jerry A. Fodor, The Language of Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975).
95. lan Cunliffe Whitefield, Neurocommunications: An Introduction (New York: Wiley, 1984), p. 76.
96. John Z. Young, Philosophy and the Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 18.
97. Patricia S. Churchland, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), p. 9.
98. John Z. Young, Programs of Ute Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 2.
99. Also see Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).
100. Lanier, "Portrait" (above, n. 50), p. IS.
101. Jaron Lanier, "Virtual Genius," (1993), p. 7 (also available on the Jaron Lanier homepage, ).
102. Michael Benedikt, "Introduction," in Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. idem (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 12-13.
103. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965), p. 185.
104. Lanier, "Virtual Genius" (above, n. 79), p. 7.
105. Swift, Gulliver's Travels (above, n. 81), p. 186.
106. See Ferdinand de Saussure, A Course in General Linguistics, Irans. W. Baskin (New York: Harper and Row, 1959);
107. Jacques Derrida, OfGratmnatoIogy, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
108. Poster, Second Media Age (above, n. 57), p. 63.
109. Simon Penny, "Virtual Reality as the Completion of the Enlightenment Project," in Culture on tiie Brink: Ideologies of Technology, ed. Gretchen Bender and Timothy Druckrey (Seattle: Bay Press, 1994), pp. 231-248, p. 245.
110. Frank Biocca and Mark R. Levy, Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995), p. 23.
111. Lanier, "Portrait" (above, n. 50), p. 15.
112. Denida, "Des Tours de Babel" (above, n. 42), p. 165.
113. George Steiner, After Babel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 233.
114. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 41-42.
115. Jacques Derrida, "Roundtable on Translation," in Tlie Ear of the Other, ed. Christie V. McDonald (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), pp. 100-101.
116. Ibid., p. 101.
117. Derrida. "Des Tours de Babel" (above, n. 42), p. 174.
118. Eco, Search (above, n. 2), p. 69.
119. See Hutchins, Machine Translation (above, n. 13), p. 24.
120. Ibid., p. IS.
121. Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New York: Summit Books, 1991), pp. 79-80.
122. Penny, "Virtual Reality" (above, n. 86), p. 248.
123. See Derrida, "Des Tours de Babel" (above, n. 42).