[Tutor] thesaurus

[ALAN GAULD]

> right now, but Chinese apparently has no distinct verb forms for past, present, 
> future.  So they rely on other words to indicate which they might mean. 


Chinese also has the problem of relying on intonation to distinguish between 
identically spelled words. We have the same in English - bow(on stage) v bow 
(as in arrows), but there are lots of these things in Chinese making translation 
of written language almost wholly context dependant, and therefore very 
difficult for a machine.

Alan G