Machine translation at the NPL

A research project in Machine Translation (MT) from Russian into English was started at the National Physical Laboratory in 1960 and carried on until its conclusion in 1966. Over these years the project evolved from a simple ‘improved word for word translation’ into a more advanced stage of translation of sentences and phrases with a certain amount of syntactical analysis, and included also idiomatic translation of many word combinations. Lastly, an attempt to provide for dictionary deficiencies by quasi-translation procedures was made. The computer used throughout was the experimental machine ACE, built at the NPL in 1959. The project was concluded because it was felt that the stage achieved (which, incidentally, proved that the idea was not only plausible but actually worked) was sufficient for a pilot experiment. Finally, an evaluation of the achieved results was carried out.