language

I heard about this translation site called "Cucumis" a long time ago. I recently received an email from someone in Cuba. Although I could understand it I felt there were a couple subtleties I was missing, but couldn't remember what that damn site was. I googled and googled and couldn't find it.

Google Translate butchered it by the way: "Hello friends I hope esten either, here all or, that so cold the cuentanos something, we had a client to vancouver by many days, good we wished much luck and successes him..."

The other ones weren't very good either. The email was far too casual and slangy. Even I did I better job than Google Translate with my limited Spanish training.

Eventually I found Cucumis' website by searching Techcrunch for anything translation-related. I found it, so techcrunch must have been where I saw it originally. The way cucumis works is this: you earn points for translating things for other people, and in exchange you can spend those points by asking others to translate things for you. Within an hour someone had translated the Spanish into perfect English: "I hope you are okay, everybody here is okay, how is the cold weather? Tell us the news. We had a client from Vancouver for many days. Well we wish you good luck and success..." Notice how the meaning of the last sentence is totally different, which is one of the things I wasn't sure about in my own translation.

In an effort to return the favour and earn back the points that were deducted from my profile for having my friend's email translated, I searched for any translation requests from French->English but didn't find any. Cucumis is a France-based site so that might explain why. Among the languages they support? Klingon. No High Elvish though.

According to a study appearing in the February 2007 issue of Neuropsychologia (Vol.45, No.2), bilingualism can delay the onset of dementia by about 4 years. This is probably because if you speak two languages, when you get older and people start calling you crazy you can fall back on your second language and start babbling away. Nobody will know the difference because they won't understand what you are saying! "Dave doesn't have dementia, he just likes speaking in French now."

Anyways, I thought this result was kind of interesting. I wonder if knowing 10 programming languages, or knowing how to read music has the same effect. Are verbal languages special? Or will any "language" do? Furthermore, is it not languages at all that delays dementia but instead some of general "brain exercise" that delays it. Maybe the brains' of people who speak more than 1 language get more exercise than other people. You know, kind of like if you exercise your heart/body it will work better and last longer. Or, is this just one of those things where it is not specifically an extra language that delays dementia but that the type of person who would learn two or more languages (or to have acquired two or more languages) and maintain fluency is the type of person who would have lived longer anyways for some other reason? Kind of like the type of person who drinks 1 glass of wine per day is the same type of person who can afford regular purchases of bottles of wine, and can thus also afford a gym membership, thus maintaining a healthy body and extending their lifespan (yes I don't buy the glass-a-day makes you live longer crap).

Credit goes to Slashdot for pointing me to this article.