Speaking In Tongues

Language can be an imprecise form of communication. Many words have more than one meaning, and our reliance on slang, dialect, foreign phrases and jargon can create even more confusion. A dish can be a vessel for serving food, the food itself, a nice-looking individual or a verb that invites us to gossip. No wonder computer search engines sometimes fail us — they don't understand us.

Now comes Albert (www.albert-inc.com), a Swiss software company that's developed an everyday-language search engine that understands how we speak — in 20 different languages. "It is...