Systran, the company that provides the dictionary software for Babel Fish and, by extension, Newstran.com, is a pioneer in the realm of machine translation, but its system works best when customized. As ragged as the newspaper translations are, they will only improve as Babel Fish expands its vocabulary. Unknown words are added to the dictionaries, so the longer it is used, the better it gets.
"We're only in our infancy," Perez said. "As computers get faster and smarter, the translations will get more precise."
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