Machine Translation: Past, Present, Future

Machine Translation Past, Present, Future (Ellis Horwood Limited, Chichester, England, 1986, 382 pp., $52.95) by William John Hutchins is a good book. It is organized around projects as “a history and assessment of efforts to mechanise processes of translating” (p.18). It is complete, discussing basically every project in the world since machine translation’s first glimmerings 40 years ago Projects are grouped by time frame, nation, or approach. The organization is, of course, somewhat arbitrary, but it is supplemented by cross-references and summary tables of projects and systems. Hutchins not only presents the theories, algorithms, and designs but also the history, goals, assumptions, and constraints of each project. There are many sample outputs and fair evaluations of the contributions and shortcomings of each approach. Hutchins also includes thorough chapters giving background and commentary on problems, strategies, and methods; for example, the discussion of the ALPAC report includes sketches of the committee member’s backgrounds. The writing is generally clear and is well supported by figures This book is a fine reference, with an extensive bibliography and a good index. It is also a readable introduction to the field. It assumes no previous knowledge of machine translation or even programming. However, because the book includes no traces of system executions, it is harder to get a feel for how these programs work. The book has a few other Book Reviews