Towards Pragmatics-based Machine Translation

We propose a program of research which has as its goal establishing a framework and methodology for investigating the pragmatic aspects of the translation process and implementing a computational platform for carrying out systematic experiments on the pragmatics of translation. The program has four components. First, on the basis of a comparative study of multiple translations of the same document into a single target language, a pragmatics-based computational model is to be developed in which reasoning about the beliefs of the participants in the translation task and about the content of a text are central. Second, existing Natural Language Processing technologies are to be appraised as potential components of a computational platform that supports investigations into the effects of pragmatics on translation. Third, the platform is to be assembled and prototype translation systems implemented which conform to the pragmatics-based computational model of translation. Finally, a novel evaluation methodology is to be developed and evaluations of the systems carried out.