Machine Translation and Machine-Aided Translation - what's going on

MT has always attracted a good deal of public attention, particularly that of people involved in translation. It has provoked controversies, sometimes very fierce, and unfounded worries among translators and their administrators. This happened partly because people put too much expectation on the possibility of MT. People talked about MT systems or the possibility of MT systems without using them. This situation, however, has been changing rapidly. Quite a few commercial MT systems have been brought on to the market in the last two or three years and the number of translators using MT systems or at least having seen them, has significantly increased. People now can form their own judgements on MT systems by actually seeing or using them. On the other hand, though old myths of MT have been debunked as people have seen and used actual MT systems, their experiences, especially of short encounters with MT, have sometimes led to new myths which are equally unfounded and wrong. In this paper, we first make a short survey of the current state of MT systems and then discuss the capabilities and defects of current MT systems. We also suggest possible directions of future MT systems, where we emphasise new modes of man-machine co-operation in translation.