The following was posted on an electronic discussion group dedicated to communication regarding historical issues, H-NET.  It is included here to help the reader understand the problems associated with translation for transnational DSS.    

 [Note from H-NET:      Professor Andreucci, the moderator of H-ITALY, is fluent in  Italian and English.  H-NET asked him to review one of the new automatic language translation programs.  His review appeared in Italian on H-ITALY.  What follows is the  automatic machine translation into English of his review. It gives a strikingly clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the program. ]

From:    Franco Andreucci <fran@vm.cnuce.cnr.it>
Subject: Italian Assistant Software - Automatic translation of my review

This is the automatic translation - done by the Italian  Assistant (MicroTac Software) - of the text I posted last week.  I didn't intervene in any word or phrase.   Unfortunately,  also the  texts intentionally written in Italian in order to be automatically  translated as examples in my review are translated. For instance, if you don't control the original Italian text, you'll miss the meaning of the sentence where "leader" is translated with  "leader".    My criticism was that "leader" is translated with "duce".   Some words are not translated because the accents are missing.   In this case, the responsibility is totally mine.

     
"Babele...[la'] the Mr. confused the tongue of all the earth" (Genesis,  11)   [by] FRANCO ANDREUCCI

The old man dreams of returning to speak the universal tongue of the Genesis and of annul the chastisement of Babele, hard [e'] to die. In the XIX century he engages the character of the artful idiom and then, in our century, that of the automatic translator. Tied hope a time to the legends of the [positivismo], contradicted from the bankruptcy of the introduction of the [esperanto], she becomes alive anchor in a fascinating and modern way from the protection of the computer. Studied in the Soviet Union in the years '30 and then, after the Second world war, in the United States, the [possibilita'] of the automatic tied translation to the action of a computer has done in the last years of the footsteps from giant. If you/he/she/it are thought that the dimension of an electronic dictionary in line [e'] passed from the 250 words of the 1954 to the actual [centinaia] of [migliaia], we one [puo'] make account that at least a problem [e'] having faced in acceptable way.

Borne from the numerous experiences scientific [svoltesi] in the linguistic field for the automatic translation, the idea has found a recent commercial realization in the programs "Language Assistant Series" of the MicroTac Software. The programs- that they are called Italian Assistant,  German  Assistant, French Assistant,  Spanish Assistant and they cost 99.95 $ each- they foresee the translation in the two senses between the English from a part and the Italian, the French, the German and the Spanish from the other. They represent an enormous footstep in ahead (respect to the by now "old" dictionaries electronic [tascabili] or to the automatic translators of phrases) for their [elasticita'] and their [capacita'] of answer complex challenges. This critique concerns the Italian part of the program in his release for Windows entirely (MicroTac Software Assistant Windows [for], [ver]. 1.00a).