Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

I had, have and always will be a big fan of Google. Everything they do is simple, well-thought, optimized, tested and done by the best of the best. So, naturally, I believe I am right beyond any possible reprieve to assume that ANYTHING that beats Google, is what we can call a real programming challenge.

I always test the Google-translate engine (English to Swahili) every now and then but the results are not all that impressive, even upto now.

Swahili. The hardest alphabet-based language to translate?

Swahili is a very structured and disciplined language and it’s translation defies the logic of common language translation algorithms. I can only ignorantly assume that Google have tried a combination of the best linguists they could get from YALE etc in Swahili + their endless resource of eubercoders to develop the engine. They are yet to hire real coders, who speak swahili. So, the logic flow between the linguists and coders gets polluted chinese-whisperesquely.

I have managed to source some support (moral, logical, conceptual and otherwise) from my boys, mentors and well-wishers and I think I can now officially start my quest to create a flawless ANY-to-SWAHILI translator. Text and voice.I will start the project in Dec, after a few Calculus remedial classes to polish up my maths.

I am yet to decide on the language, but I an inclined to use a combination of C++ and Java to build to the logic engine and weighting logic, then Python or plain old, cool PHP for the presentation layer. DB? MySQL of-course. Once done, web-services and APIs for Web, Wap, J2ME and android apps will follow.

I invite fellow coders who see this as a worthy challenge to join me in this task and let us put our beloved language out there and make it universal.

Habari ndiyo hiyo. Back to life.

Wazi.