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Learn a language, translate the web

Automated translation software has come a long way, but it still needs a human touch. That’s the viewpoint of Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, who is developing Duolingo, which gets users to translate web pages at the same time as teaching them the language those pages are written in. In a pilot due to start in a few months, users will take lessons in which they translate phrases and sentences pulled from the web in the language they want to learn. Combined with automated translation software, von Ahn hopes to provide a flawless translation tool for…

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