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"It's Greek (or Chinese) to me!"
September 18, 2007
by Fred Bortz,
2 years 9 weeks ago
Comment: 24984
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Fifteen years ago, I wrote a young adult book called Mind Tools: The Science of Artificial Intelligence, which is still current in many aspects. I have a few copies left to sell as bargain books at personal appearances for teens who are into AI. (E-mail me using my website link if you want one.
Anyway, the main reason for this posting is that the article reminded me of the opening of chapter 9 in the book, "Expert systems to Understand and Translate 'Natural Language'." It's amusing and relevant to the famous "Chinese room." I am the "American man" in the incident.
--- begin quote
An American man once asked a Greek colleague to translate the English expression "It's Greek to me!" into Greek. She did so, but, not speaking a word of her native language, he couldn't understand what she said.
So he asked her to translate it back into English. "It's Chinese to me," she said.
They laughed and wondered whether their Chinese-speaking friends had similar expressions in their native language.
--- end quote
Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)