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Monday, March 27, 2006 |
TOKYO (BUSINESS WIRE)-Toshiba Corporation today announced collaboration with the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the "GlobalMind Project," an ambitious program to bring cross-cultural common sense to computer systems. The company hopes to explore new ways to give computers human-like understanding for applications such as Japanese text recognition and processing, car navigation, and robots.
GlobalMind, launched in 2005, is the extension of the Open Mind Project that the MIT Media Lab initiated in 2000, and which now has gathered approximately 800,000 common-sense facts through the contribution of some 20,000 people. The intent is to teach computers all the "common-sense" things the average person knows but takes for granted: an understanding of the world and of what people everywhere experience every day.
GlobalMind data, which is publicly available and freely downloadable, is an important step in bringing the world of Open Mind to different languages and cultures. For while some cultural phenomenon are universal (eating when you are hungry, drinking when you are thirsty), some vary from culture to culture, or at least are expressed differently. The GlobalMind Project is intended to reflect this by extending the OpenMind Project to more languages, including Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, French and Spanish. The ultimate goal is to gather common-sense knowledge from across different cultures and from as many countries as possible.
For further information see http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060327005486&newsLang=en.
3:49:52 PM 
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Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, Probolinggo. An Islamic boarding school in Probolinggo, East Java, has a rite that they say will allow you to master a foreign language without going to classes or studying at all. This rite is called Ilmu Laduni (the knowledge from God) and allows someone to learn something without really studying it. To master this Ilmu Laduni, students are to say a prayer for several hours and then recite a few Arabic sentences (not taken from the Holy Koran) mixed with words from the Coptic language of Egypt. Bathing rituals are also a part of this rite. The school claims that this rite has been successful with thousands of students and charges between Rp 500,000 and Rp 1.5 million (US$112 and $337).
For more information, see http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20060327.Q04&irec=5.
12:37:41 PM
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Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, Surabaya. If you look at the job openings advertised in the mass media, you will notice straightaway that English is almost always one of the most important prerequisites. It is said that regional languages, such as Javanese, have lost much of their attraction among language learners here.
Fore more information, see http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20060327.Q03&irec=4.
12:18:05 PM
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BEIJING, China (Xinhua) -- Fudan University will set up the city's first undergraduate translation program this September to meet the growing demand for professional translators. Fudan plans to enroll 16 to 17 high school graduates from all over the country as the first batch of English-Chinese translation majors this year. Students will be required to take professional skill trainings, such as translation and interpretation, as well as cultural education courses including Chinese literature.
For more information see http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-03/27/content_4348958.htm.
12:00:15 PM
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