June 1998
If you want to be successful, you have to think ahead. That's what my daddy said as he put on his coat and went down the cellar and disappeared forever, shortly before the police started coming in at the doors and windows.
I've never forgotten that.
Think ahead. Sure thing. So when the computer boom started and people were talking about computers putting translators like me out of business, it was time to start thinking ahead. Too right.
You know how it is when you think. I mean really, deeply, meaningfully think? You get a migraine, that's what. Better to put the problem in the back of your mind, consume some substances and, like, meditate.
The which I did - and man, did I have an idea? You bet I did: an idea so vast, so all-encompassing, so totally world-changing in its fundamental assumptions and implications, that it would, like, completely re-write the future of mankind. And womankind too, of course.
Unfortunately I'd forgotten it when I woke up.
Some smartass thinker this is, I can hear you sneering. Think ahead, ha! Didn't think far enough ahead to write down notes or put a cassette in the recorder, hey, goldfish-brain?
Well ha! ha! right back, of course I did. Unfortunately I must have invented a new language at the same time as I was writing the notes, and not even I could make any kind of sense of squzzltmrphms in bts. If that's what it was. And the cassette: well, the music's good when you can hear it for all the giggling and crashing and what sounds like a bathroom tenor making up new lyrics to everything from Perry Como via Buddy Holly to the Rolling Stoned. (Oops, sorry, Freudian slip there.) In the same new language, too. At least I hope it was, otherwise I needed a shrink, you know?
No wonder the neighbours complained.
So it was back to caffeine and Beethoven and exercising the little grey cells like Hercules the Parrot. Migraine-plus time. Man, what I do for my art. Anyhow around the end of the Ninth it all finally worked out - well obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be letting you know about it and about how, like, terrifically cool it all was. Oh yes.
All the best ideas are obvious once you've thought about them. It wasn't my daddy who said that, though he might have, it sounds like him. Or it could have been me, though I don't think it was. Aw, the hell with it, who cares? And it was, too. Obvious, I mean. Like, computers putting translators out of business? Not until they can talk, they won't. Well, hey man, it was time to start learning about computers
The which I did. And you know something? Computers are dumb. D. U. M. B. stupid dumb. Like there's this slogan: garbage in, garbage out - and that's when they're working properly. One character mistyped, one extra space in a string, one error of punctuation, and not only does the program flunk its task, the damn machine gives you some smug error message that means absolutely nothing to anyone who doesn't speak machine-code. Computers are incredibly literal. Not to say pedantic. They make my old Latin teacher look like a model of flexibility and improvisation.
It was time to get seriously worried.
Because languages are made up of sounds, and those sounds can be broken down into their component parts, and the permutations of those parts are not infinite. And there's an internationally-recognised phonetic alphabet to represent those parts in a way which lends itself to encoding. Oh, man.
It was time to think ahead.
Suppose you could have a computer program that would translate, say, English into Russian -and vice versa, if you like it that way- without turning I'm leaving on Monday into I abandon my life. Would you sit in front of a computer and type in the text, complete with misprints and lousy punctuation, and then hit the translate button and spend the next two hours correcting all the stupid mistakes? Only if you had to. What you'd really want to do would be to speak into your computer and have your, er, spontaneous words, er, translated more or less immediately into, er, whatever language you wanted.
With some cleaning-up: because to er is human, but man, is it annoying.
It was only a matter of time before some computer nerd somewhere invented what is now called voice-recognition software. No way could I compete with that man, man. But I could compete in the field of analysis and synthesis, so that when the software was good enough, I could be first in through the door.
Voice-recognition took one hell of a long time, man. And was I glad, because to go from one language to another you can't just go sound for sound nor word for word. Languages are made of, like, patterns; and these patterns are, like, variations on a number of related themes. I needed spare computers and stacks of disks just to track my own damn work.
Hell, I'd had to upgrade so many times I had computers in the bathroom.
Think ahead. The Jumbo Jet did not take its maiden flight at Kittyhawk in 1903. Man, that thing of string-and-canvas could hardly lift Orville Wright off of the ground. So there was no way I could just write the Universal Translator back in 19….. God, do I feel old.
Or not at that moment in time, anyway. So I had to start with just two languages, and as there's one language which covers most of the globe, one of those two had to be English. American English, that is. Right on, man.
Told you I thought ahead.
Like yeuch, man. Or yuk. Or yug. Or euch, or even eeugh. Or awe, aw, oar, ore or or. Whoever invented English should be shot, and if he has to be dug out of his grave to do it. No, hell, shooting's too good for him. Hang him first, then shoot him. Yeah. Anyhow, thank God for the phonetic alphabet.
Freude, schöne Götterfunken… it might have been old Ludwig van, the first modern mobile roadie composer, but I tell myself that it was the sheer logic of German which sold it to me as the second language for my string-and-canvas Flugzeug - or as we say in American English, fly-thing. The pedantic literality of computing made German the obvious choice.
Think ahead. The prime requirement was to devise a system which worked. The fact that I was using the language of a country which was split between East and West and was very likely to be turned into a radioactive wasteland at the drop of another Cuban Missile Crisis was, like, not a major factor in the equation. It just so happens that the structure of German is a good way in to the structure of Russian; and as for the alphabet, I was using phonetics anyway, so ha ha.
I admit to being a genius.
It took time. I admit that, too. Hell, man, I had a living to make and a life to live, you know? And it was fun, too, back in the days before we had knowledge. Man, if I go to Heaven I want to be eighteen forever. I think. Or maybe not. Hell, I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now.
That made sense when I thought of it.
Anyhow, all at once there was this contract up for grabs for a program which could translate English into -and I quote- other language/s. And another contract for a program which could turn -and I quote- at least one other major language into English. They meant American English. Too right I'd thought ahead. So sue me, already.
It was time for Aaron Miltenberg to tread the stage of history. On the brand-new Internet, of course. Trendy, man.
Think ahead. Like, I was in first with a half-decent package which turned I'm leaving on Monday into I'm going on Monday away with only a fifteen-second gap. Long enough for CIA censors to intercept a message from a whisky-soaked President before it reached the ears of a vodka-drenched Secretary of the USSR. Or vice-versa, if they enjoyed it that way. The contribution I was making to the peace and safety of the world, they should have paid me in gold already.
And it was one of the first things ever sold over the Internet. I was kinda proud of that.
Think ahead. Like, my first package did English/German and German/English. That's hardly a major language, they complained. Like they were trying to drive down the price. Ich bin ein Berliner said I, quoting Kennedy. Though why in hell he wanted to be a doughnut is beyond me, man.
Anyhow they tried it out at some length, and President spoke to Chancellor with near-enough perfect understanding.
Like, I'd have settled for silver.
So I gave them the Russian package. Well, actually I wanted to sell it to them, but what the hell, man, even Aaron Miltenberg has some vestige of patriotism. And besides, if I hadn't given it to them they'd have taken it anyway.
Which they did.
Like, they asked for the Universal Translator on a 3-month test and evaluation period. Exactly two months in to that trial it was declared a National Asset and National Secret and protected (i.e. stolen) for the defense of the acutely vulnerable United States of America from the hordes of ravening Communists (whose aircraft were still using valves in their electronic circuits).
Or did they imagine the British were going to land in New England and claim their colonies back?
At the same time the Translator was grabbed under the legislation preventing the export of munitions to hostile nations. And friendly ones, too. Long live the Land of the Free and the home of the mighty dollar.
Did Aaron Miltenberg see one lousy cent? No prizes for guessing, man.
Think ahead. Like, it takes the average person only a short while to get really bored with hearing the same damn thing over and over again. The entire pop music industry makes a living from this. CIA operatives, however, have more staying-power, and they're rotated quite regularly. But the permutations are not infinite, man; which is where the timer-delay eventually kicked in.
And all at once, Good Morning Mister President came out as You Are Gay With Your Daddy: and Shall we discuss the Arms Limitations Treaty? was rendered as Would you like to give me a blow job, sweetie?
World War III did not happen, which was kind of a relief, man. I had things to do, you know? What was intended was that the people who wanted to rip off Aaron Miltenberg might decide that co-operation was better than coercion.
Not a chance. Man, those fascist bastards. All at once Aaron Miltenberg was, like, gone. Vanished. Finito. Kaputt. And the Universal Translator too, before it even got properly started. And the idea of computers translating voicemail. Gee, I was weeping buckets (not). So the demand for human translators went up another gear: man, I was really broken up, ha ha.
Think ahead. Too right.
Like, Aaron Miltenberg. Home Page stalled, whereabouts unknown. Some people say he fled to Brazil, others say he's slaved in a gold mine in Siberia, more people say the CIA got him and he's encased in concrete beneath a Freeway overpass. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and by hook or by crook everyone on the Internet is trying to find him, man.
Me too: man, the least I can do is apologise for using his identity.
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