Give it a real workout
See how well it copes with the prosaic witterings from AManFromMars
Israelis offer 'British' pukka-lingo ware to Blighty
An Israeli company has recently issued a "British English" version of its prose-polishing software suite, winning plaudits in the quality UK press. WhiteSmoke, a firm hailing from Tel Aviv, initially intended to market its tech to customers for whom English was a second language. To the founders' surprise, however, there was …
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Monday 1st October 2007 14:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Unfortunate choice of name for an Israeli company
Your search "white smoke israel" returns
"White phosphorus (weapon) wikipedia, Israel stated it's use of the weapon was legal..."
"Vatican (AsiaNews) – Plumes of white smoke rose from the chimney on the roof of ... 07/28/2005 VATICAN – ISRAEL Accusations against Pope John Paul II are a"
"SHTULA, Israel -- Several thousand Israeli troops made their deepest push yet into ... Puffs of white smoke issued from the helicopters as they fired their"
How about 'wordflex' or 'linguahelp' or 'wordytastichelperiscous', or in fact anything that doesn't suggests some kind of munition being fired?
Also, "WhiteSmoke suggests context-based synonyms from its vast database and synonym dictionary." The irony in that sentence just staggers me.
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Monday 1st October 2007 14:02 GMT James Anderson
Paul....
Increasingly For the last several few years various companys have been agressively fighting against the very pointless adjectives etc et al in the valiant fight to keep these important things uncomplicatedly simple and easily readable, now, at this moment, there is a marvelous program that will randomly insert or usefully add these retrospectivly back in?
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Monday 1st October 2007 14:52 GMT yeah, right.
Oh really?
"WhiteSmoke software sends everything you write back to the parent company. "
Oh really? Or were you being sarcastic? Had to tell sometimes with you lot. If not, then I guess it's because the real translation engine is internet based, and the software you get is just a front end? How nice of them to provide the Israeli government and other companies with a first-hand look at what business and government around the world is writing, before it's actually published.
I wonder if the US-Israeli friendship includes Patriot Act style secret (as in you go to jail if you speak to anyone including a lawyer) access to any data on any computer that just about any government agency wants access to?
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Monday 1st October 2007 14:57 GMT cor
How about...
.. taking some text, (your own work please...) and running it through Babelfish into, say French or German, then back to English.
Next, do the same after 'Whitesmoking' it, just for a laugh. This could be the cause of diplomatic meltdown, and subsequent WWIII.
Ok, it's Monday. Things are slow.
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Monday 1st October 2007 15:29 GMT Ash
Why are Brits and Yanks buying this?
Surely it's a sign of the astounding quality decrease in Primary and Secondary education when the British business minds require specialist grammar checking software to write their letters properly!
Saying that, though, my old boss did get me to write all his letter for him. He used to work for TW2, you know...
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Monday 1st October 2007 16:03 GMT SPiT
Not very legal in the UK
"WhiteSmoke software sends everything you write back to the parent company. "
Which immediately means that if your text contains any personally identifiable information then it is covered by the Data Protection Act and exporting the text to Israel is likely to be illegal.
Kind of difficult to use it to write letters to people.
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Monday 1st October 2007 22:50 GMT Austin Tayshus
yeah, right @ Oh really
Nice conspiracy theory. Your beliefs in the competence of the Israeli government are rather touching.
If the millions wasted on retired generals returning to public "service" via lucrative consulting contracts and government tender project cost overruns were saved, then perhaps we'd actually have some money to fund teams of inspired individuals to sit around reading poorly edited cut and pasted FUD written by the worlds marketing departments and disseminating the competitive intelligence info in realtime to product development teams spam filters.
Clearly, knowing press releases from companies who can't even afford professional translators is going to allow generate millions for companies who will magically and instantly create copycat products and announcements.
Probably easier to either discover info by inserting trojans directly onto corporate end users machines (that is sooo 2005) or just put level 7 probes into Internet backbone (read your Wired story here: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70908 ).
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Tuesday 2nd October 2007 06:15 GMT Aubry Thonon
Anglish Vs English
"WhiteSmoke, a firm hailing from Tel Aviv, initially intended to market its tech to customers for whom English was a second language. To the founders' surprise, however, there was massive takeup in America from users who considered themselves native speakers."
There even are places where English completely disappears!
Why, in America they haven't spoken it for years...
-- Professor Henry Higgins, "My Fair Lady"
@Fluffykins
That should probably be "saperlipopette"...
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
