A model for transfer control in the METAL MT-system

Ta.~ p~esant paper tries to outlln~ a model to ~nhanc~ tile trm~sfer control within the N~T;d. Machine Translation, System. The model is being currently tested An th~ ~srman-Spanish system which is under development in Barcelona and relies upon techniques belonging to the GPSG framework. The central idea is to extract from the transfer part of th,~ phrase structure rules currently used by METAL all the :4elevant generalizable information about feature traffic and control dependences, and put at in form of language-dependent tables. This infomnaticn is then accessed and h~mdled by a few high-level rule operators, called during th,~ transfe~ process, implementing three general feature pz:~nciples. The grammar writer is thereby relieved from the todinus task of controlling all the feature traffic between nodes, this resulting in a clea~er, shorter and safer grab,mr for the system.