Is a universal translator possible in real life? We already have many programs that claim to be able to take a word, sentence, or entire book in one language and translate it into almost any other. The reality, however, is a bit more complicated. Ioannis Papachimonas shows how these machine translators work, and explains why they often get a bit mixed up . As an experienced translator who knows the complexities of the job, I always giggle a bit thinking about the strange tra