Suggestions for Mechanical Translation*

IN OUR opinion, linguists and engineers who have so far turned their attention to mechanical translation have been delayed by the lack of a workable description of the operations which men perform on translating. That description still seems elusive. We believe the philosophical tradition is against it; and lay people as well as scientists and linguists conform to that tradition whenever interpreting and describing human activities relevant to thought, language and knowledge. For this reason we believe that the research going on in the Italian Operational School will be of some use in this connexion. This research is carried on mainly with the view to constructing an apparatus which performs some of our mental operations and gives them verbal expression. This programme requires that the philosophical tradition be reconsidered and that we adopt some new views and results.