Rise of Machines: Fun, Fact & the Future

This little rant is from a recent conversation with a language engineer here on Ibadan campus - by recent, I mean two hours ago, today - about the future of machine translation technology and African languages. What brought the discussion was a suggestion by the humble blogger that humans are not ever going to be dispensable in this coming technological future. My interlocutor believed otherwise, quoting from empirical and research progresses that suggest that although not "yet uhuru" for machine translations, in about ten years or less, we'd get to a position where humans would be totally dispensible in language tranlation. In short, if the language technicians and scientists ask the right questions, we'd soon get to a place where machines would actually be able to translate nuanced and culture-contexted texts from African languages into English. He said: "the question is not whether/or, it is how soon, and what are we doing to make it come to pass". TA being his quintissential self, I let his arguements pass. He's one such linguists at the fore-front of African technology initiatives in language. And as surely as there are so many advantages of language technology, the human angle (yea I said it out loud) should not be overlooked. i.e the future of men when/if it ever happens that machines take over their work and capabilities.


Looking back, as much as I agree with the eventuality that many human translators will be out of business soon, I decided to retain the right to laugh at the future instances of machine foibles and flops (like that of inserted photo, culled from blogamundo). And rather than sweat to hasten the coming apocalypse for human translators, I can also poke fun from the safety of my still nuanced African linguo.


I am a trained linguist, yes, but I am also many other things besides. My choice for this discipline is somewhat of a "rebellious" association which equips me with tools and privilege with which to poke fun at my own foibles and that of my environment. In short, I can now consider myself a cunning linguist. (no pun, please).

More in my recent post at Instablogs

African Languages (Technology): Call For Papers

Language Technologies for African Languages

March 30 or 31 (to be determined), 2009

Athens, Greece

A Workshop at the annual meeting of the European Association forComputational Linguistics

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

In multilingual situations, language technologies are crucial for providing access to information and opportunities for economic development. With somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 different languages, Africa is a multilingual continent par excellence and presents acute challenges for those seeking to promote and use African languages in the areas of business

development, education, research, and relief aid. In recent times a number of African researchers and institutions have come forward that share the common goal of developing capabilities in language technologies. This workshop provides a forum to meet and share the latest developments in this field. It also seeks to include linguists who specialize in African

languages and would like to leverage the tools and approaches of computational linguistics, as well as computational linguists who are interested in learning about the particular linguistic challenges posed by African languages.

Limited funding available for participants from Africa

The reviewing will be blind and the paper should therefore not include the authors' names and affiliations. Submission will be electronic. Papers must be submitted no later than December 19, 2008 using the submission webpage that will be available soon. Submissions will be reviewed by 3 members of the Program Committee. Authors of accepted papers will receive guidelines on how to produce camera-ready versions of their papers for inclusion in the EACL workshop proceedings. Notification of receipt will be emailed to the contact author.

More Information at http://aflat.org/ and http://www.mail-archive.com/africanlanguages@yahoogroups.com/msg00670.html

On Translation

Well, the Nobel fever of last week did achieve one thing: highlighted the importance of literary translation, which, by the way, is not an exclusive preserve of linguists.

What are my challenges as a linguist/translator in Africa? Besides the dearth of works by African writers in indigenous languages. I know that I do not make a new point when I comment that most of the literatures of indigenous Africa that need/mandate translation are not written but oral. Thus, it would seem that any serious work in that area by a willing linguist has to necessarily include lots of fieldwork and gathering of indigenous narrations that make for good textual literature.

I am discovering a few more blogs that explore the experience of living as a translator, and its challenges.

...And Some Flak for American Literature

In a related news, the American literary world has received flak from Mr. Engdahl of the Nobel Academy for being "shallow". The comment according to NY Times "provoked a wave of indignation when he criticized American writers as “too isolated, too insular” and “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture.” Europe, he declared, is “the center of the literary world.”

No American has won the Nobel literature prize since Toni Morrison did in 1993.

Well, no Nigerian has won the Nobel Literature Prize since Wole Soyinka did in... wait for it... 1986. If American literature, with the likes of Roth, Angelou, Ashbery et al is considered too insular, what does that say of Nigerian literature? Food for thought? Any thought for new Nigerian literatures that do not make the Military regime, civil wars, hunger and ritual sacrifices all that define us as a people? Any thought for the new literatures that acknowledge outside influence and mutations. Any new ideas from us to the world. Or are we finally done, finally culturally unravelled as not to have anything more to add to the world. If so, might that perhaps not be a new reality to be explored in new literatures?. Well, all tongue-in-cheek comments aside, it has been acknowledged that the Nobel exercise is as political as it is literary so there, such comments should not be taken as the final word on literature!

A Nobel Week

Many interesting things happened in the gone week. One was most remarkable.

The Nobel Prize for literature was given to a Frenchman whose works interestingly have not been accessible to the many people of Africa, and even of Europe where he resides. Jean-Marie Gustav le Clezio was given the prize for being the "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization"

His book Onitsha (after the Eastern Nigerian city) details his experience of living in colonial Nigeria - one of such accounts by a foreigner would make a good read, if only for its unique perspective. There is of course a mild irony that Chinua Acbebe an annual member of the speculative shortlist of the prize is from that same region of Nigeria, though born a decade before this year's prize winner.

The New York Times writes in this recent article that "Mr. Le Clézio is not well known in the United States, where few of his books are available in translation, but he is considered a major figure in European literature and has long been mentioned as a possible laureate. "

His not being known here, and in the United States might be due to a lack of adequate translations of his work. But you have to know a writer's/story's prospects before venturing into translating them. What have the French-English literary translators been doing all these while? No doubt the writer has now become a hot cake and will now be made more accessible now that his name has joined the greats. This year's award thus throws a light on a branch of literature often neglected at great risk to the sustenance of literary culture: translation. Not many people in Africa and America will know what Le Clezio has written in his native French language until and unless his works are translated. And we can't force him to write in English!

This week also tasked my opinion and knowledge on the language questions in (African) literature. It is a wide debate: which language should the African write in? These recent events have only vindicated the opinions of great voices like Chinua Achebe who insists on writing in whatever language, as long as he passes his message across. That language of course happened to be English, although the question remains whether he would have been so globally recognised if he had written Things Fall Apart totally in his Igbo language. Ngugi wa Thiong'o now writes in his native Gikuyu language, and later translates them himself into English. In all, literature exists in different cultures and only translation can make them more accessible either from a dominant language into teh minority ones, or vice versa.

Needless to say, that book, Onitsha has now joined my reading wishlist. Sadly, one may have to wait until Nigerian publishers secure publishing/translation rights for those works of the writer before we get them to buy here in Nigeria. Any other suggestions?

Here is a phone interview with Le Clezio. And an old interview. Finally, here is a link to a short story by the writer, translated.

Internet and the Questions of Privacy

The past few days got me thinking about privacy on the internet. No doubt it is one of the main issues in its functionality and relevance. A fellow Nigerian Blogger complained about impersonation. An old friend had to leave Facebook after a few months involvement in its social network. He had come to the conclusion that he was losing his tab on his activities, words and contacts. In short, no more in control. It seemed so easy these days to get lost in this modern world of social interaction. That's why many of us go back to make a deserved re-appraisal. I have cause to agree with my friend - also a Blogger - but still I find myself unable to be so bold. I still can't get my thoughts away from the internet after just a few hours of disconnection.

In a recent publication, it was said that addiction to/demand for internet pornography is now on a steep decline because of the ubiquity of online social networks like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube etc. Can you believe it? A good thing perhaps, as we are now too busy poking ourselves with imaginary Facebook pens and Yahoo buzzes to want to do a little peeking at naked breasts at Bang Bros.

Here is a recent news report where Aerosmith's frontsman Steven Tyler (pictured) sued anonymous bloggers who had laid secrets of his and his girlfriend's life on Blogspot. And who can easily forget the News Agency of Nigeria's trouble in the past few days when a "hacker" was reported to have sent damaging report about Nigeria's president from one of their dead email addresses?

Two weeks ago, in this same cybercafe from where I write, a malicious virus that displays a .gif image of Kenya's opposition leader cum Prime Minster Raila Odinga on the user's computer preventing them from using it was finally removed. It had been developed somewhere in Southern Africa perhaps by supporters of the East African politician, and sent around Africa in a supposed campaign of solidarity for their perhaps patron. More on the Odinga Virus here.

These are interesting times for privacy - that word that has come to take on a new 21st century meaning that we cannot yet fathom.

Grammatika!

Musicians are not all known to be good speakers of English. But musicians whose language is English, and whose primary audience are English speakers are at least expected to have some mastery of the language. My opinion. And I am fairly sure that everyone would consider Pop icon Michael Jackson a native speaker of the language. How then did the following from his pen get past the scritiny of his many editors and producers into a top hit track?

from I'll Be There

If you should ever find someone new

I know he'd better be good to you

But if he doesn't...

(then) I'll be there

...

My emphasis is on that third line. Look at it again. If he doesn't do what? Elementary grammar shows that verb inconsistent with the preceding "He'd better be good to you", and the most correct alternative would have been "...but if he isn't...", which means "if he isn't good to you, I'll be there."

But I guess it may not make much musical sense now. After all, we're talking about the King of Pop. Perhaps we could write it off as an innocent dialectal variant of American English, if that would sell.

Never mind that it was he as well who wrote the #1 hit single "We are the World" in which the following was also written:

from stanza 2. Note the emphasis, mine

As God has shown us by turning stone to bread

And so we all must lend a helping hand

God of course never turned stone to bread. At least not in any written scripture I know. The closest was when Jesus was tempted by the devil. He was teased to turn stones to bread so as to ease his hunger from fasting. In another instance, Jesus himself multiplied some loaves of bread to feed a multitude. The only thing he turned, I think, was water - into wine. So where did Michael and Lionel Richie get their "stone to bread" from? We could find more of such examples if we tried to pay more attention to the lyrics of the songs we hear.

But don't mind me, I sometimes let my critical faculty dwarf my appreciation of an otherwise beautiful work of art.

The Blogger is Back!

The Blogger is Back!

I admit, it has been a while since I posted anything worthwhile here. I even (selfishly, I agree) took the blog off the net for a few months. Let me apologise for this, and thank all those who asked, and those who kept checking up for new updates. There are many roads to be trod.

The blogger, however, is back, and he'll be here for some time. This blog might undergo changes, but it will remain.

For those who want to know, an alter ego of this blogger has been writing and commenting on news issues in Nigeria and beyond on a Citizen's Journalist website called InstaBlogs.com. More on this later. You can read past and current articles at www.igwatala.instablogs.com

Enough now. Gotta run.

News item

Salman Rushdie's book to be read in Cologne Mosque
Bin Laden "quite likes" the Satanic Verses

Note: Only one of it is real news, but both are worth reading.

The Bumblebee Myth

According to 20th century folklore, the laws of aerodynamics prove that the bumblebee should be incapable of flight, as it does not have the capacity (in terms of wing size or beat per second) to achieve flight with the degree of wing loading necessary. Jokingly, not being aware of scientists proving it cannot fly, the bumblebee succeeds under "the power of its own arrogance" (McFadden et. al. 2007). The origin of this myth has been difficult to pin down with any certainty. John McMasters recounted an anecdote about an unnamed Swiss aerodynamicist at a dinner party who performed some rough calculations and concluded, presumably in jest, that according to the equations, bumblebees cannot fly.[4] In later years McMasters has backed away from this origin, suggesting that there could be multiple sources, and that the earliest he has found was a reference in the 1934 French book Le vol des insectes by M. Magnan. Magnan is reported to have written that he and a Mr. Saint-Lague had applied the equations of air resistance to insects and found that their flight was impossible, but that "One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations don't square with reality".[5]

It is believed[citation needed] that the calculations which purported to show that bumblebees cannot fly are based upon a simplified linear treatment of oscillating aerofoils. The method assumes small amplitude oscillations without flow separation. This ignores the effect of dynamic stall, an airflow separation inducing a large vortex above the wing, which briefly produces several times the lift of the aerofoil in regular flight. More sophisticated aerodynamic analysis shows that the bumblebee can fly because its wings encounter dynamic stall in every oscillation cycle.

Source- Wikipedia

Politics of Language

Besides the bullet monologues which have become daily occurences on the streets of Lagos in the past weeks, we are a witness to a new war of words that have marked Nigeria's politics as truly remarkable. And interesting.

We have seen the Parade of Dangerous Politicians et al.

Now, I have a leaflet in my hand which has as a headline, "Asiwaju of Criminals (AC)", plus a picture of the incumbent governor of Lagos state. This was distributed by the campaign train of the Lagos State PDP aspirant today.

We've heard of Penkelemes etc. Now its about Korosive, Fashy them et al.

Isn't all this far better than the dialogue of guns?

Nigeria Discussion - The New Naira

WAZOBIA WHAT?



I've been riled recently by the excuse that the wazobia texts on the news naira notes will serve in some way to engender nationalism or what not. I made the following comments to laspapi's blog last week on the matter. For me, it is useless trying to appease only three sections of the country with three texts on the Naira. There is nothing wrong with the arabic signs. Whatsoever.

Perhaps our greatest problem in Nigeria is in emphasising our differences/what makes us different (we don't even do it well) than stressing what makes us one. Arabic there doesn't help nationalism perhaps, but neither does it harm it. Read below.


"The CBN thinks it has removed the arabic signs, but I still see it there. The "Feudal Lords" don't see it there however. Neither do you laspapi.

What was the CBN thinking anyway, removing the arabic signs to replace it with wazobia phrases? Thanks Nilla. What do you want the Isoko man to read? Or a man who only speaks ghotuo.Anyway. Methinks cognition is what matters. The agbero, or the illiterate beggar will still recognise a "muri" from a "waso".The dollar has Latin afterall. Why not arabic, as long as it doesn't say "mohammed is..."

And again (refer to the first sentence), the numerals 20, 50, 100 etc are afterall arabic numerals and have not so far caused any pious pneumonia to any christian/secular spender of the money." Or should we remove those as well?


Photo from Laspapi's

Impossible to fail

Suggestion 1. Decide to be happy with yourself and accept you, as you are, pimples stretch marks and all. Make a habit of looking at the mirror, once a week, just to admire whom you see and say to the (wo) man in the mirror, “ You are OK”. (If symptoms persist more than three days a week, consult your shrink).Suggestion

2. Determine your personal vice and commit yourself to being faithful to it against all well meaning advise of friends, family, foes and free advise givers. You are human. You should not be perfect. You have a right to have a weakness to help you to be strong in the tough times ahead.Suggestion

3. Give freely anything that doesn’t cost you. Maybe, you have a ride, give someone going your way a lift once in a while. Maybe, you received several dairies; share. When strangers ask you for directions, be kind. Don’t deliberately send them on àródân. By so doing, you will not win a lottery, get a ministerial appointment or have angels visit you at home. But you will learn to give, which, I tell you, is in many ways eminently more fulfilling.

More at www.kiibaatimania.blogspot.com

Four lines

I sometimes wish this were a ship, going somewhere
a cabin free, free dip to fall in the moving deep,
all alone across a time dial that still ticks, here
like a grain of sand in a drunken sleep.

Some Babel Poetry

There sure was a reason why the gods confounded man at Babel. See below, what might likely happen if a sentence, phrase or poem as I tried below, is passed through these languages. English-French-German-English. Let's just assume that three bilingual people should meet and should have to converse. The Englishman speaks English to the Frenchman who repeats it in French to the German who in turn says back it in English.

This experiment started here

Source:
Twinkle Twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky.

Result:
The sparkling sparkling hold less the first role, as I ask myself over, what you over the so high world than a diamond in the sky upward are.

Below are some random blog descriptions, and what Babel thinks of them:

ARACELI'S BLOG: A mummy and some other things. This blog once per week is brought up to date... it is, if he is not.

MAC'S BLOG: I. I am even my conscience. I am living me my conscience, breathing and consciously. * Now I stop understanding me * I am logical, and very systematically I am not a perfectionist. I am not special, but I am different. I endorse art car portrait control, and I remain a Wurzelschoessling for the free expression.

NILLA's BLOG: Place the patriotic Nigerier downward at the earth.

KIIBAATI'S BLOG: Proudly Naija with confidence liberally and evenly Creative. Thinking global, but actively humanly. And the assionémentglauben (that), from it it is impossible to fail...

WORDSBODY: I am of the Niger an author and an art journalist based in London. I write an art column in a newspaper of the Niger, and my work appears likewise in many other publications occasionally. This blog is a consequence from in former times on the culture and the arts. As the entrance hall on the scene of the art of Nigeria will be before, an author particularly of the Niger of the body of its ' word ' -. in the measure, as, we will likewise affect on a broader African writing exactly the same as the international literature. Briefly a saturation of the arts.

iGwatala's BLOG: By Nigeran, the large six of feet four, but fortunately made by the books more largely I did not read males. Thusly mentioned Milosz of the poles (no intended wordplay). First a linguist once a journalist and often poèt. A young strange man, who thinks it, is mostly just seen to him everything and written for the Exorzismus. Well, since, then he will not save the literature the world not also not me save could. But attempt I. This blog is a public intimate kind newspaper, an unloading, blog comme un livre dans progressent - from a vibrated soul. All reserved rights.

I sure as heck didn't say the above!

Mack tagged me.

Three things that scare me:
1. Change
2. Creativity
3. Adulations

Three people who make me laugh
1. Chris Rock/Sola Olorunyomi's Daughter
2. My niece of 13 (who by the way writes some poetry)
3. My dog

Three Things I love:
1.Water
2.Peace of mind
3. Wine

Three Things I hate
1. Heat
2.Mosquitos
3.The smell of Flit/Raid/any mosquito repellant

Three Things I don't understand
1. Change
2. Growing up/grown ups
3. Myself

Three things I’m doing right now
1. Typing
2. Thinking about home.
3. Drinking.

Three things I want to do before I die:
1. Publish a (collection of) plays (and probably short stories), and more poems.
2. Finish reading Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses
3. Save the world

Three things I can do
1. Get into trouble
2. Get lost
3. Stare/Play Chess

Three things you should listen to
1. Music (Lots of it)
2. Yo mama
3. Sola Olorunyomi on the Bass Guitar

Three things you should never listen to
1. Me on the Bass guitar
2. My opinion on the poem of whomever I do not particularly like
3. Tade Ipadeola's assessment of anyone's poem.

Three things I’d like to learn:
1. Patience
2. To sometimes keep my mouth shut.
3. How to sometimes just be invisible/How to say NO.

Three beverages I drink regularly:
1. Five alive
2. Vino Tinto Sangria
3. Ponche. (Did he say beverages?)

Three TV shows/Books I watched/read as a kid:
1. Stories my mother told me (book)
2. Arofo awon Omode (I know you don't know it. Go search online)
3. Alawiye(book)/Ifa Olokun (TV serial)


I still insist there's something sinister about the internet.

BABEL IS CRAZY. But we know that already, right?

Here's my find this afternoon in some idleness. Keyed in the following text in English into Babel Fish asking for a French translation:

"What is worth doing at all is worth doing well"

I get the following translation back, which I suspect might be correct in French:

"Ce qui vaut la peine de faire du tout vaut la peine de faire bien".

Now, I translate that back into English, using the same software, I get the following:

"What is worth the sorrow to make whole is worth the sorrow to make well."

***

Curious, I tried for German.

English to German: Was wertIST, an allen zu tun,IST wert, gut zu tun

German back to English: "Which is to do at all is worth, to do well"

***
In all cases, the meanings had changed by the time it got back to the original language.

Last try. ENGLISH to FRENCH to GERMAN, then to ENGLISH

ENGLISH TO FRENCH ="Ce qui vaut la peine de faire du tout vaut la peine de faire bien".

FRENCH - GERMAN = Was das Leiden wert ist, vom Ganzen zu machen, ist das Leiden wert, gut zu machen

GERMAN - ENGLISH= "Which suffering is worth to make from the whole one to suffering is worth to make good"

Wits and Wisdom of the Computer!

Now, ASSIGNMENT. I hereby tag all of you who read this blog to make your own experiments, and make your findings known. Pick a short quote, and run it through languages, then let's see what you get in the end. Remember that childhood game we play in circles, when we pass a little phrase round a circle in whispers until it reaches the person that started it, most times in a mangled, humorous form? This looks like it. We can call it Stille Post E-nternational.

Thanks Somegirl, Chinese Whispers, was the English expression I was looking for.

Okay, Okay.

Let us start today with this song from Eminem. Let me confess, he's actually one of the songwriters I relate to much lately. This track plays on the computer as I write from an author's office this midnight:

Sometimes I feel I'm crazy...
why am I here, am I just wasting my time?
But then I see my baby, suddenly I'm not crazy,
It all makes sense when I look into her eyes.

Sometimes it feels like the world's on my shoulder
Everyone leaning on me
Sometimes it feels like the world's almost over
but then she comes back to me
...

Okay, so much about retiring from blogging. It wasn't meant to be, as you must have guessed, but sometimes you wonder if the world was going to end, and you try to speak, say something out before you go, instead of leaving the world to complain of your impromptu exit. You know; that... let me speak before they try to insinuate that the exiting was not prethought of...

Back to songs, I also remember this from the movie "Bringing down the House". Queen Lateefah had sung:

Life aint going nowhere
slow down
I'm just taking my time
until you show me some time
that you're better than the rest...

The advice here often becomes the hardest to adhere to. But it's true, right? Life's going nowhere.

So, so much for philosophy. Blogging will remain. Maybe it's the new reality. "Google is the new Godot". Flash drive is the new trinket. Everyone is wearing it now. We will remain here, it seems, and what we MUST do, is to keep on speaking to one another. I may not be able to transmit my thoughts through words however. I may not successfully transmit my amazements, fears and hopes. My knowledge fail me when I face stark reality. Like Milosz described, it is like a housefly's amazement on the waxed glass of a vehicle, how does it understand the concept of solid air? And how much innocence must remain in a man until he is genuinely flawed? Isn't innocence itself overrated? Useless questions really, but not useless, the acts of questioning.

Welcome me back? There's so much to learn from each other.

NB: If you would be in Ibadan in March, you could drop by at the Osundare at 6o Literary Fete at venues in Ibadan, Ikere, and Lagos. See ya there!

The blog stops here.

Or maybe not. Twice, I have tried to get out of the internet. Twice I have failed. The first was at Yahoo 360 just after my return from NYSC, when blogging began to seem a far less comforting alternative to tangible social consciousness, and day jobs. Now last week it hit me again - the devil, and I turned the blog off to only allow private viewership. The peace of mind I envisaged therefrom however did not last. And here I am again. Apologies to all while I still contemplate a final solution. Till then, here we are.

So, meanwhile, let me recommend the following (new?) blogs: Kiibaati, Nilla, and Mack. That is if you have read OWNB, and Noni Moss. Also BlogAfrica and NigerianBloggers where this blog will continue to be aggregated even if it ever get's taken off the public.

The world around me is changing.
I must too, again and again.
Hope the light at the end of the tunnel
is not that of a coming train!

"Our greatest fears is not that we are inadequate... but that we are powerful beyond measure..." Williamson

iGwatala!

Two poems, mine

MACEDONIA
Lagos again, December

Speak you must, muse, in taps, raps -
Drum, tat-a, rolls of a furious key.
The tongue to rile a fog of blabbing naps.

As with a lost wing, flap on white winds -
Serrated dots of letters, dice dials of thought
Move the night with mares of omen rinds.

Why do you forget yourself so? Soul-
Journer of a sea of words and flaming fate?
It is I who call. Grant the bearing role.

Speak you must, muse, in raps, taps -
Drum, tat-a, rolls on a furious key.
From this fringe of meagre dream of wraps

IF THESE WERE WRITTEN IN TIMES PAST

They would smell of rum, maybe wine
Of a pristine dance on brown keys that tapped,
Rasped in echoes across father's dusty lounge.

They would reek of innocence, shy lines
Of the toddler whose eyes lay only in the silence,
laden trivia of books, and old record sleeves.

They might show relics of a hopeful child lie
Within a bulwark of rage in the silence of night,
Quiet when adults slept with ears apart, dead to the world.

They would try to hide the author's disgust
for past bustles, home noise and day jobs,
Useless rants that mainly deter than fuel a budding muse.

But it wasn't written then, and so the past remains
Bilked in bits of old rum in even older flasks, and pains.

(c) All rights reserved. 2007.