The development and use of machine translation systems

Types of translation demand When giving any general overview of the development and use of machine translation (MT) systems and translation tools, it is important to distinguish four basic types of translation demand. The first, and traditional one, is the demand for translations of a quality normally expected from human translators, i.e. translations of publishable quality – whether actually printed and sold, or whether distributed internally within a company or organisation. The second basic demand is for translations at a somewhat lower level of quality (and particularly in style), which are intended for users who want to find out the essential content of a particular document – and generally, as quickly as possible. The third type of demand is that for translation between participants in one-to-one communication (telephone or written correspondence) or of an unscripted presentation (e.g. diplomatic exchanges.) The fourth area of application is for translation within multilingual systems of information retrieval, information extraction, database access, etc. The first type of demand illustrates the use of MT for dissemination. It has been satisfied, to some extent, by machine translation systems ever since they were first developed in the 1960s. However, MT systems produce output which must invariably be revised or 'post-edited' by human translators if it is to reach the quality required. Sometimes such revision may be substantial, so that in effect the MT system is producing a 'draft' translation. As an alternative, the input text may be regularised (or 'controlled' in vocabulary and sentence structure) so that the MT system produces few errors which have to be corrected. Some MT systems have, however, been developed to deal with a very narrow range of text content and language style, and these may require little or no preparation or revision of texts. In recent years, the use of MT systems for dissemination purposes has been joined by developments in translation tools (e.g. terminology databases and translation memories), integrated in authoring and publishing processes. These 'translation workstations' are more attractive to human translators. Whereas, with MT systems they see themselves as subordinate to the machine, in so far as they edit, correct or re-translate the output from a computer, with translation workstations (or workbenches) the translators are in control of computer-based facilities, which they can accept or reject as they wish. The second type of demand – the use of MT for assimilation – has been met in the past as …