The Proper Place of Men and Machines inLanguage Translation

  • Authors:
  • Martin Kay

  • Affiliations:
  • Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, U.S.A./ kay.pa@xerox.com

  • Venue:
  • Machine Translation
  • Year:
  • 1998

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

The only way in which the power of computers has beenbrought to bearon the problem of language translation is machine translation, that is,theautomation of the entire process. Machine translation is an excellentresearchvehicle but stands no chance of filling actual needs for translationwhich aregrowing at a great rate. In the quarter century during which work onmachinetranslation has been going on, there has been considerable progress inrelevantareas of computer science. However, advances in linguistics, importantthoughthey may have been, have not touched the core of this problem. Theproper thingto do is therefore to adopt the kinds of solution that have provedsuccessfulin other domains, namely to develop cooperative man–machine systems.This paperproposes a translator‘s amanuensis, incorporating into a word processorsomesimple facilities peculiar to translation. Gradual enhancements of suchasystem could eventually lead to the original goal of machine translation.