Useful Links on Machine Translation in Europe:
My issue with SYSTRAN is that it's translations from German to English are usually worse than unacceptable and are far worse than a toy system I wrote around 1988.
Given any particular example people might suggest that SYSTRAN has some difficulty dealing with umlauts. The real problem with SYSTRAN is that it does not output approximately correct English structure from German, it doesn't deal with prepositions correctly, it fails on some common German verb forms, and it often outputs the wrong English verb (Germans do this too, but SYSTRAN is far worse than typical German English) and it mangles word order. All of this should be dealt with and corrected at the syntactic level. SYSTRAN does correctly translate some simple sentences. However, simple sentence structure in English and German is virtually identical leading one to suspect that SYSTRAN is doing little more than direct word for word substitution.
An example taken from today's Der Spiegel online:
I gave SYSTRAN the following url:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,273618,00.html
and got the following result:
NOTICE IN THE IRAQ
Dead one and buried one in the headquarters of the Italians
Catastrophic notice on the center of the Italian police in the Iraq: A suicide assassin bombte in the city Nassarija at least twelve humans into death under the rubble of the building some buried one is assumed. The CIA comes to an extremely negative estimate of the security situation in the Iraq.
Bagdad - which reports Italian military that it came on Wednesday morning against 10.40 o'clock (7,40 MEZ) in direct proximity of the police center nearby the Iraqi Chamber of Commerce to a heavy explosion. Carabinieri in Rome communicated, it Iraqi and Italian victims gave. To data of the Italian press agency Ansa at least twelve humans died.
Many soldiers should be buried still under the rubble of the building. The explosion is to have been released by a suicide assassin. The Italian general Guido Bellini said in Rome, a witness had seen, how a truck before the barracks of the Italians exploded.
The building was completely destroyed by the force of the detonation. Numerous vehicles started to burn, a ammunition camp came up in flames.
The Arab transmitter aluminium-Dschasira reports, several Iraqi policemen and civilians to its hurt. Also aluminium-Dschasira quotes eye-witnesses, who would have explained opposite reporters, it concerns a suicide assassination attempt. With explosive of loaded trucks at the entrance detonated.
Italy is involved with 2500 soldiers and policemen in the reconstruction Iraq. Both chambers of the Italian parliament interrupted their meetings and inserted one being silent minute. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi condemned the notice and expressed the member of the dead ones its condolence.
CIA estimate: All still more badly than so far expects
Since the end of the main fighting in the Iraq war, proclaimed by the USA, nearly daily notices were committed on US and western mechanisms. With the current attack the structure efforts of the international community receive a heavy setback again.
According to estimate of the CIA the security situation will still continue to worsen shortly - in Bagdad and in the whole country. The pessimism of the American secret the MC is larger than the extent of the misery granted of the US government, does not announce the US transmitter CNN with reference to in particular government representatives mentioned. Details of the appropriate CIA report did not become admit. It penetrated however that the Iraqi Guerrilla has strong inflow, and that the resistance comes easily at weapons.
Possibly the alarming evaluation of the situation in the Iraq led by the CIA to it that civil manager Paul Bremer was called after Washington, in order to discuss the further procedure in the Iraq.