Machine Translation and Computer-Assisted Translation: a New Way of Translating? Author: Olivia Craciunescu E-Mail: Olivia [email protected]
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Machine Translation and Computer-Assisted Translation: a New Way of Translating? Author: Olivia Craciunescu E-mail: [email protected] Author: Constanza Gerding-Salas E-mail: [email protected] Author: Susan Stringer-O’Keeffe E-mail: [email protected] Source: http://www.translationdirectory.com The Need for Translation IT has produced a screen culture that Technology tends to replace the print culture, with printed documents being dispensed Advances in information technology (IT) with and information being accessed have combined with modern communication and relayed directly through computers requirements to foster translation automation. (e-mail, databases and other stored The history of the relationship between information). These computer documents technology and translation goes back to are instantly available and can be opened the beginnings of the Cold War, as in the and processed with far greater fl exibility 1950s competition between the United than printed matter, with the result that the States and the Soviet Union was so intensive status of information itself has changed, at every level that thousands of documents becoming either temporary or permanent were translated from Russian to English and according to need. Over the last two vice versa. However, such high demand decades we have witnessed the enormous revealed the ineffi ciency of the translation growth of information technology with process, above all in specialized areas of the accompanying advantages of speed, knowledge, increasing interest in the idea visual impact, ease of use, convenience, of a translation machine. Although the and cost-effectiveness. At the same time, Cold War has now ended, and despite the with the development of the global importance of globalization, which tends to market, industry and commerce function break down cultural, economic and linguistic more than ever on an international scale, barriers, translation has not become obsolete, with increasing freedom and fl exibility because of the desire on the part of nations in terms of exchange of products and to retain their independence and cultural services. The nature and function of identity, especially as expressed through translation is inevitably affected by these their own language. This phenomenon can changes. There is the need for countries clearly be seen within the European Union, to cooperate in many spheres, such as where translation remains a crucial activity. ecological (Greenpeace), economic The Internet with its universal access to (free trade agreements) humanitarian information and instant communication (Doctors without Borders) and between users has created a physical and educational (exchange programs), etc. geographical freedom for translators that Despite the importance of English, there was inconceivable in the past. is the commonly-held belief that people have • Do the new technologies threaten the the right to use their own language, yet the livelihood of the translator? diversity of languages should not be an • Does automation imply the obstacle to mutual understanding. Solutions disappearance of translation as we to linguistic problems must be found in know it? order to allow information to circulate freely A Short History of Machine and to facilitate bilateral and multilateral Translation relationships. Thus different aspects of modern life have It was not until the twentieth century led to the need for more effi cient methods of that the idea of creating automatic translation. At the present time the demand dictionaries appeared as a solution for translations is not satisfi ed because to the problem of linguistic barriers. there are not enough human translators, In the 1930s two researchers worked or because individuals and organizations independently towards the same goal: do not recognize translation as a complex the Franco-Armenian George Artsrouni activity requiring a high level of skill, and and the Russian Petr Smirnov-Troyanskii. are therefore not prepared to pay what it is The latter was the more important of the worth. In other words, translation is sometimes two because he developed the idea that avoided because it is considered to be too three stages are necessary for a system of expensive. In part, human translation is automatic translation: fi rst an editor who expensive because the productivity of a knows the source language analyzes the human being is essentially limited. Statistics words and converts them into base forms vary, but in general to produce a good according to their syntactic functions; translation of a diffi cult text a translator then a machine organizes the base forms cannot process more than 4-6 pages or into equivalent sequences in the target 2,000 words per day. The economic language; fi nally, this rough version is necessity of fi nding a cheaper solution to corrected by a second editor, familiar international exchange has resulted in with the target language. Despite the continuing technological progress in terms signifi cance of Troyanskii’s work, it of translation tools designed to respond remained generally unknown until the to the translator’s need for immediately- late 1950s. available information and nonsequential The invention of the computer led access to extensive databases. very quickly to attempts to use it for This paper aims at examining the new the translation of natural languages. technologies (machine translation, A letter from Warren Weaver to the electronic dictionaries, terminology computer specialist Norbert Wiener in databases, bilingual texts, grammatical March 1947 is considered to mark the concordances, and translation memories) in beginning of this process. Two years order to determine whether they change the later, in July 1949, Weaver publicized relationship between the translator and the his ideas on the applications of the texts, and if so, then in what way. We will computer to translation and shortly try to answer the following questions: afterwards a number of universities in the United States initiated research • Which computer tools are genuinely into the fi eld of machine translation. In useful to translators? 1954 the fi rst feasibility trial was carried objectivity and vision, the ALPAC report out as a joint project between IBM and led to a freeze on research into machine the University of Georgetown. Although translation in the US for more than a very limited in scope, the demonstration decade. However, research continued in was considered a success, leading to the Canada, France and Germany and two fi nancing of other projects, both in the US machine translation systems came into and the rest of the world. The fi rst versions being several years later: Systran, used of machine translation programs were by the European Union Commission and based on detailed bilingual dictionaries Taummétéo, created by the University of that offered a number of equivalent words Montreal to translate weather forecasts in the target language for each word listed from French to English. in the source language, as well as a series Important advances occurred during of rules on word order. The complexity of the 1980s. The administrative and the task made it necessary for developers commercial needs of multilingual to continue improving the programs communities stimulated the demand for because of the need for a more systematic translation, leading to the development syntactical focus. Projects were based on in countries such as France, Germany, advances in linguistics, especially on the Canada and Japan of new machine development of transformational generative translation systems such as Logos (from grammar models that appeared to offer German to French and vice versa) and new possibilities for machine translation. the internal system created by the Pan- However, initial optimism soon disappeared. American Health Organization (from Researchers began to think that the semantic Spanish to English and vice versa), as barriers were insurmountable and no longer well as a number of systems produced by saw a solution on the near horizon to the Japanese computer companies. Research problem of machine translation. IBM and also revived in the 1980s because large- the University of Washington produced an scale access to personal computers and operating system called Mark II, but the word-processing programs produced results were disappointing. By 1964 the US a market for less expensive machine government was becoming so concerned translation systems. Companies such about the ineffi ciency of machine translation as ALPS, Weidner, Globalink (North programs that it created the ALPAC America and Europe), (Automatic Language Processing Advisory Sharp, NEC, Mitsubishi, Sanyo (Japan) Committee) to evaluate them. In 1966 this needed these programs. Some of the most committee produced a highly critical report important projects were GETA-Ariane that claimed that machine translation was (Grenoble), SUSY (Saarbrücken), MU slow, ineffi cient and twice as expensive as (Kyoto), and Eurotra (the European Union) human translation, concluding that it was The beginning of the 1990s saw vital not worth investing money in research in developments in machine translation this fi eld. Nevertheless, the report stressed with a radical change in strategy from the need to encourage the development translation based on grammatical rules to of tools to assist the translation process, that based on bodies of texts and examples such as computer dictionaries, databases (for example, the Reverso Program). etc. Although criticized for its lack of Language