《history of machine translation》.pdf

Machine translation: a concise history W. John Hutchins [Website: /homepages/WJHutchins] 1. Introduction This paper traces the history of efforts to develop computer programs (software) for the translation of natural languages, commonly and traditionally called ‘machine translation’ (MT), or, in non-English-speaking countries, ‘automatic translation’ (traduction automatique, avtomaticheskij perevod ). A brief history can of course mention only the most significant research systems and projects 1 and only the most important operating and commercial systems (and none in any detail ). From the beginning, researchers concentrated almost exclusively on the translation of scientific and technical documents, where the difficulties of cultural differences and variable contexts are less acute than in the more ‘culture-bound’ translation of literature, legal texts, and many areas of sociology. In science and technology, the demand for translation has almost always exceeded the capacity of the translation profession, and these demands are growing rapidly. In addition, the coming of the Internet has created a demand for immediate online translations, which human translators cannot possibly meet. Basically there are two types of demand. There is the traditional need for translations of ‘publishable’ quality, particularly the production of multilingual documentation for large corporations. Here the output of MT systems can save time and costs by providing draft translations which are then edited f