Machine translation: potential for progress

Abstract

A status report on a controversial and much-maligned area of technological research and development.

Machine Translation does not often make the headlines, though it can happen. In the non-English-speaking world, at least, the last time the spotlight briefly fell on this normally unexciting activity was in September 1998, at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The report on the case by the Independent Council, Kenneth Starr, containing an account of the President's intimate dealings with Miss Lewinsky, was placed on the Internet and to satisfy the morbid curiosity of surfers everywhere was immediately translated into the world's major languages using the free translation software available on a number of WWW sites. The results, not surprisingly, were laughable. A capable human being would have had a hard enough time translating such a potent combination of technical and colloquial English: the MT applications were quite out of their depth. The silliest gaffes appeared in newspapers and everyone agreed that the on-line MT programs were useless; the subject was soon forgotten.