P*rl in Latin, whither Python?

[Erik Max Francis]

Nick Bensema wrote:

> Actually, I think the unpopularity of Esperanto owes to that it
> doesn't
> really have a "killer app" that is obvious to the public.  People
> learn
> Spanish to speak to Mexicans, Latinos, and Spaniards.  People learn
> German and French to speak to Germans and French people and to read
> written works in their respective original languages.  But why would
> someone learn Esperanto?

About the closest thing to a "killer app" in existence for Esperanto
might be the Pasporta Servo:

    http://home.wxs.nl/~lide/paspserv.htm
    http://home.wxs.nl/~lide/ps_lingv/ps_en.htm [English]

The idea is that Esperantists can travel to other countries and be other
Esperantists' guests, free of charge (or at least extremely cheaply),
and get shown around town not by a tourist agency but a local.

> For us, the killer app might be in making one's writing more readable
> for the entire world, either through machine translation or through
> genuine comprehension.  It is conceivable that if Babelfish or
> Elingo supported Esperanto, one might get better results translating
> Esperanto to English, Spanish, Japanese, and French, than translating
> any one to any of the others.

I know there was one such service that translated from any supported
language to any other.  It did this by first translating everything to a
auxiliary language, and then retranslating it to the target language;
the auxiliary language that was used was (essentially) Esperanto. 
Unfortunately, I don't remember which translation service this was at
the moment.

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