Interlingua Vs Transfer? Knowledge Sharing across Projects

Sharing knowledge across projects is often considered impossible, especially if the systems involved present differences in underlying theory, representation, or even programming language. This paper, taking a collaboration between the CAT2 and PANGLOSS MT projects as an example, demonstrates that it is possible to combine resources developed separately to support the processing of different modules in a joint system. Despite the differences in the two MT methods, the transfer-based CAT2 and the interlingual PANGLOSS systems proved to share similarities in their linguistic representations that simplified the interfacing between the two systems. Referring to this result the paper presents a discussion of the transfer/interlingua continuum and attempts to bridge the gap between the two MT alternatives.