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From: tjj@ssc-vax.UUCP (T J Jardine)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Language Translation
Message-ID: <475@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Aug-83 15:47:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.475
Posted: Thu Aug 25 15:47:19 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Aug-83 18:47:23 EDT
References: <4452@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
Lines: 31

OK, you turned your flame-thrower on, now prepare for mine!  You want to
know why things don't get published -- take a look at your address and
then at mine.  You live (I hope I'm not talking to an AI Project) in the
academic community; believe it or not there are those of us who work in
something euphemistically refered to as industry where the rule is not
publish or perish, the rule is keep quiet and you are less likely to get
your backside seared!  Come on out into the 'real' world where technical
papers must be reviewed by managers that don't know how to spell AI, let
alone understand what language translation is all about.  Then watch as
two of them get into a moebius argument, one saying that there is nothing
classified in the paper but there is proprietary information, while the
other says no proprietary but it definitely is classified!  All the while
this is going on the deadline for submission to three conferences passes
by like the perennial river flowing to the sea.  I know reviews are not
unheard of in academia, and that professors do sometimes get into
arguments, but I've no doubt that they would be more generally favorable
to publication than managers who are worried about the next stockholder's
meeting.

It ain't all that bad, but at least you seem to need a wider perspective.
Perhaps the results haven't been published; perhaps the claims appear
somewhat tentative; but the testing has been critical, and the only
thing left is primarily a matter of drudgery, not innovative research.
I am convinced that we may certainly find a new and challenging problem
awaiting us once that has been done, but at least we are not sitting
around for years on end trying to paste together a grammar for a context
sensitive language!!

Ted Jardine
TJ (with Amazing Grace) The Piper
ssc-vax!tjj