Artificial Intelligence -- Machine Translation
compiled by Andrea Forte and Magan Stephens
The application of natural language processing to the field of translation is known as
machine translation or MT. Although the importance of developing accurate and efficient MT
software is most obvious in more linguistically diverse areas of the world than the United
States, MT development is a well-researched technology both here in the U.S. and abroad.
For the layperson, it may seem that computers would be well-suited to the problems
involved in translating a text from one language to another. Unfortunately, this is not
the case. Because human languages are largely dependent on human experience and intuition,
it has proven nearly impossible to emulate human language capabilities in a machine.
By following the links below you can find out more about machine translation.
Introductory Material
Just starting out? Take a look through the following links to get an idea about what
machine translation is, its history, whay it's important and how it works.
Survey of the State of the Art
in Human Language Technology
Start at this link to peruse a whole book about current (1996) natural language
technology. The text is easily understood by the lay reader and addresses many different
areas of NLP, not just one specialized topic.
Machine translation: An Introductory Guide
The best place to start for general knowledge about machine translation, this link
provides access to an entire introductory textbook on machine translation. The book is
written to promote a basic understanding of MT as a field and to clear up commonly held
misconceptions.
Can Computers Translate?
A review of four Japanese-to-English translation programs, this article first appeared in
the journal Computing Japan. It evaluates four translation progams and informs the reader
about the kinds of problems that need to be solved before Japanese-English translation can
be effective.
Machine Translation: A Brief
Introduction
Definitions, evaluations and personal opinions about machine translation make this page an
effective starting point for the machine translation enthusiast. Although the page is
somewhat garbled-looking, it also lists MT-related conferences, vendors of MT applications
and major supporters of research.
Organizations and Research Groups
Here are some professional organizations and research groups that are currently involved
in machine translation projects. (For a more complete lising, see the last section of this
page entitled Link Pages.)
European Association for Machine Translation
The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organization that serves the
growing community of people interested in MT and translation tools, including users,
developers, and researchers of this increasingly viable technology.
Association for Machine
Translation in the Americas
AMTA is an association dedicated to anyone interested in the translation of languages
using computers in some way. This includes people with translation needs, commercial
system developers, researchers, sponsors, and people studying, evaluating, and
understanding the science of machine translation (MT) and educating the public on
important scientific techniques and principles involved.
Center for Machine Translation
The Center for Machine Translation (CMT) at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon University conducts advanced research and development in various technologies for
natural language processing. Links from their home page include technical reports and
current projects.
Research Groups in
Natural Language Processing
A list of links to the home pages of research groups involved in natural language
processing. This list is funded by the European Union and has not been updated since 1996.
Commercial Applictions
Translation Experts Ltd.
Translation Experts Limited is a company dedicated to the provision of products and
services that bridge the language barriers. They have been developing natural language
translation software, dictionaries and a network of expert translators around the world
for a number of years.
IBM
Information on four different IBM products (including an order form, of course!) can be
found here. It's interesting to see what IBM has to offer in commercial machine
translation software.
Advanced Materials
A Full-Text Experiment
in Example-Based MachineTranslation
Sergei NIRENBURG, Stephen BEALE and Constantine DOMASHNEV
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
This paper provides detailed information about one area of research in machine translation
(example-based). It is intended for individuals with advanced knowledge of machine
translation.
Compound Nominal Groups in the
Machine Translation f Medical English: Lexical Units or Analysable Sequences?
Reuben Woolley
Aston University Language Studies Unit
Extremely specific problems in the realm of machine translating scientifc texts are
addressed in this paper. This link may prove interesting to those with previous knowledge
of machine translating and/or the medical field.
University of Maryland - Machine
Translation
This link offers a cursory description of the research goals at the University of Maryland
concerning machine translation. There are also downloadable papers on advanced MT
subjects.
The
Mikrokosmos Machine Translation Project
This link provides a detalied description of a comprehensive study of the computational
treatment of texts covering a wide range of linguistic and language use phenomena. It
should be read with the intent of gaining specialized knowledge.
Information Sciences Institute
The Machine Translation (MT) research group at ISI is developing programs that translate
Japanese, Arabic, and Spanish texts into English. This page provides downloadable papers
in postscript and links to other advanced resources.
Link Pages
Machine Translation
A list of Organizations, Journals, and Online Demos compiled by Andrea Forte and Magan
Stephens for Dr. Palmquist's Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems class Summer 1998.
Machine
Translation Links
Compiled for a computational linguistics course at Georgetown University, this page
includes links to other organizations working on machine translation.
Computing Resources
A list of links and resources for language-related computing maintained by the Summer
Institute of Linguistics (SIL), located at the International Linguistics Center in Dallas,
Texas. This list includes resources for many areas of natural language processing.
Go to the Library!!!
Don't forget, if you're really interested, there's lots more to be found at your local
library about machine translation. Here's a quick bibliography to start...
Beaven, John L. _Shake-and-Bake Machine Translation_. Edinburgh : University of
Edinburgh, Dept. of Artificial Intelligence, (1992)
Eynde, Frank van. _Linguistic Issues in Machine Translation_. London; New York:
Pinter Publishers, 1993.
Hauenschild, Christa and Susanne Heitzman, eds. _Machine Translation and Translation
Theory_. Berlin; New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 1997.
Locke, William N. _Machine translation of languages; fourteen essays_. Cambridge:
Published jointly by Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Wiley, New York, 1957, c1955.
Varile, Giovanni Battista. _Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language
Technology_. Pisa : Giardini ; Cambridge (USA) : The University of Cambridge,
1997.
Also look for the Journal, _Machine Translation_, for discussion of current topics.
last edited: Aug. 12, 1998