Language is one of the most complex entities known to people. We make use of a variety of languages around the world. Each person is even born with a mother tongue. Yet, we have not been able to completely understand the workings of a language. That is because language is not a manmade entity. Human beings did not sit down one day and decide to create different languages. According to the “Tower of Babel” account, the Lord Almighty created different languages in an effort to deter man from pursuing this evil project of building a tower up to heaven.
Humans have thus found it extremely difficult to understand how language really works. We are able to use a language easily and translate from one language to another. When we try to teach the computer to do the same, we find it extremely difficult to get good results. In order to teach the computer to translate properly, we need to provide all the rules pertaining to a specific language. However, since we ourselves do not understand how languages work, we are not able to automate this process successfully. We do not even understand how our mind processes language and how we are able to translate a language perfectly using the human mind.
When a computer translates from one language to another, the results are mediocre at best and ridiculously humorous at worst. There is no evidence to prove that we are making any progress in our understanding of languages.