RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture

[Ken Beesley <Ken.Beesley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: "Alex Condori" <lista2@iname.com>

> > From Ken Beesley
> >The history of Logos is potentially interesting
> 
> >To begin, it would seem that the founders Bud Scott and 
> >Charlie Byrne, and their first workers, belonged to a "Jesuit
> >sect" that lived on a "commune" somewhere near Middletown,
> >New York, USA.  Presumably their primary motivation was
> >to support missionary work.
> 
> >Another popular machine-translation group, Globalink, _may_ 
> >have connections to Georgetown University (again Jesuit).
> >Again, corrections and more information would be welcome.
> >Very early MT work at Georgetown also led to the Systran MT system.
> 
> And did not Ludovico Bertonio happened to be a JESUIT
> himself? And, of course, his work on Aymara was
> developed on a misionary basis.
> 
> It must be a Jesuitic conspiration :)


Alex,

You're joking, of course, but I really didn't mean to imply 
that there was anything like a conspiracy.

I'm from a religious background myself (Mormon) and I worked
for a company (ALPS, later ALPNET) that, though quite secular itself, 
grew out of an earlier machine-translation project at Brigham Young 
University that had definite religious motivation.

So I am sincerely interested in religious motivations behind
a variety of machine-translation projects.

Correction:

By the way, my information about "Jesuits" behind Logos came
from a former Logos employee, and he was mistaken.  I am now in
contact with Bud Scott himself, who very kindly sent me an
unfinished document describing the beginnings of Logos.  Scott
and Charlie Byrne were indeed the founders.  Their lay
community (or "commune" or "Catholic kibbutz" in Scott's words)
was led by a remarkable man named Herbert, a Third Order (lay)
Dominican.   The commune also included three Dominican priests,
a number of nuns who left their orders after Vatican II, and
lay people from all walks of life.  The first contract for
this company was to build an English-to-Vietnamese translation
system.  According to Scott, all the early workers at Logos 
Corporation, except for the Vietnamese linguists, came from 
this Catholic lay community.  It had (in 1969) about 200 people
of all ages, including lots of children; and it was, indeed,
located near Middletown, New York, in a little township
called Mount Hope.

I'm still trying to find more information about this community.
It sounds like Laura Jones (who is so angry at me for questioning
her linguistic ideas) may in fact be a member (she refers to 
"our community").  I'm not angry with her, and I'd love to hear
her perspective.  Really.

If the list is interested I'll report again on what I find.

It should not be too much of a surprise to find religious
motivations behind this, and several other, machine
translation efforts.  Most of the linguistics in the world
is, and always has been, done by religious missionaries,
including remarkable linguists like Bertonio, to whom anyone 
studying Aymara owes a great debt.

Ken




**********************************************************************
Kenneth R. Beesley		ken.beesley@xrce.xerox.com 
Xerox Research Centre Europe    Tel from France:    04  76 61 50 64  	
6, chemin de Maupertuis		Tel from Abroad: +33 4  76 61 50 64
38240 MEYLAN			Fax from France:    04  76 61 50 99
France				Fax from Abroad: +33 4  76 61 50 99

XRCE page:      http://www.xrce.xerox.com
Personal page:  http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley/beesley.html
**********************************************************************