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From: raph@tigger.planet.bt.co.uk (Raphael Mankin)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re^2: Language Translator
Keywords: French program wordprocessor
Message-ID: <551@tigger.planet.bt.co.uk>
Date: 8 Sep 89 10:03:46 GMT
References: <1374@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US> <4318@cps3xx.UUCP>
Organization: RT5111, BTRL, Martlesham Heath, England
Lines: 49

usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner) writes:

>In article himage@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (Steve Schwartz) writes:
>>I am looking for a program or a utility, that will translate foreign
>>language text files to english (particularly french to english).

>You're asking for an awful lot!  I don't think such a thing exists
>except in a very rudimentary form.  Natural languages are just too
>complex.  My guess for this sort of thing would be to contact Wycliff,
>the Bible translating people.

>However, maybe it exists and I'll be (very) pleasantly suprised.

There are naaaatural language translation programs about, they vary
from the mammoth to the mini.

Systran will handle most European languages and even American. It
requires very laaarge, not to say huge, IBM mainframes to run and will
cost accordingly.A This is a pure batch system.

Coming down a bit there is the Weidner system which runs, I believe,
on PDP11sss and other minis. This is not a pure translator, rather it
is a program for assisting a human translator.

Apoart from these there are SpandAm aand AmSpan, used by the American
Health Organisation, to translate between  Spanish and American.
Tom-Meteo is a Canaaadisn system fro translating weaather reports.
ILSAM is a controlled vocabulary system use by, amongs others, Raank
Xerox for fully automatic translation of manuals.

In general, a fully automatic, high quality translation is not
possible. The present state of the art will give you about 50%
comprehensibility and you will have to post-edit the program's output.

The various interactive systems, such as Weidner, will greatly
increase the productivity of a human translator and are probably the
best bet at the moment.

There is a lot of work going on: translation accounts for about 30% of
the total budget of the European Commission - the only larger item is
the common agricultural policy. I doubt whether we shall see any
significant improvement in automatic translators until their
authors give up the notion of sytnax directed translation. Syntactic
analysis does not work because natural languages, unlike computer
languages, are neither compositional nor referentially transparent.
is a machine assisted translation program.
-- 
Raphael Mankin
raph@planet.bt.co.uk