In natural language processing, language detection or language guessing is usually the more difficult problem of deciding which language content is from a given natural language source. computational approaches to this difficulty see it as an instance of machine text classification, solved by various statistical techniques. The most common one used for language guessing (sometimes called “content recognition”) involves a very deep understanding of the workings of the human language, and even of natural language grammars themselves. This involves taking parts of a given sentence, disassembling it into its component parts, and attempting to understand what the grammatical structure of that part tells us about the language’s grammar. Most often, though, it’s still done using a somewhat crude sort of machine-readable form; because it’s all still done on a computer.
Natural language processing methods (usually “deep grammatizers” like Linguistic Software International) aren’t limited to determining the correct syntax of a given sentence. They also try to detect grammatical categories, including word categories, phrase structures, and even word meanings. This is called “linguistic analysis”, and it turns out to be one of the most important aspects of language detection. It turns out that human languages share enough structural elements to be quite complex, even when they are spoken in the same culture. Computer programs are able to identify these elements automatically, and to extract the essential information from the input. This information can then be used to provide very high accuracy levels for language detection experiments.
One of the most common applications of language detection software is speech recognition. It’s usually called” Speech Recognition” or “Speech Identification” (for the same reasons that we use “recognition” to describe something that’s been achieved in human intelligence research). Commonly, the applications of speech recognition in language processing fall into two general areas. One deals with speech recognition of purely audible material (the output of a computer program, for example, when it has to analyze a foreign language transcript), and another deals with speech recognition of unsophisticated (but still audible) materials. For instance, it’s not too uncommon to analyze a video game voice track and get a decent translation (if we’re lucky) or to turn a recorded speech into an opera-singer-style vocal performance (maybe not so lustfully).
Another area where speech recognition in language processing is useful is machine translation. The goal of this kind of application is to translate texts from one language (usually English) to another language (usually German). The idea is to create a document that is technically correct in every respect but has the feel of the original document (for instance, German grammar may be totally different from English grammar, but the ‘feel’ of the language is somehow the same). To do this, programs usually translate phrases (which they then pass on to a translation service), create new words that sound like the target language’s equivalent, and even replace words that the source and target languages have in common, like “the” in German and “the” in Japanese. This can be applied in all sorts of contexts – from writing documents to web pages, from documents in the field of anthropology to technical manuals.
Of course, not all language detection programs are human-readable. Some are designed just to search large databases for patterns. This kind of software will typically translate phrases or entire paragraphs of text, passing them through a machine that scans these words and produces a clean vocabulary, grammar, and spell checker-free document. The main advantage to this kind of program is that you can be sure that your document isn’t completely misconstrued. If you have any doubts about your translations, you can just redo them from scratch.
On the other hand, some language detection applications are designed to translate entire projects. Some are designed to translate documents from one language to another. And, of course, there are programs that translate between several languages (not to mention non-lingual software like flashcards and interactive ebooks). Whatever the application, language detection software is now essential for anyone who wishes to translate languages.
There are a number of different kinds of language detection software. Depending on your needs and your budget, you’ll likely find something that’s right for you. But whether or not you choose it depends largely on whether or not language detection serves as a primary or secondary tool for language translation.
It’s also important to keep in mind that not every language detection software program is created equal. There are some that offer very little support for language pairs that aren’t English. Or that translate a few words at a time. Or even that doesn’t translate at all! It’s important to get a software package that serves its intended function, and that you can fully trust.