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Nearly all research activities in the 1980s were devoted to the exploration of methods of linguistic analysis in order to create generation of programs based on traditional rule-based transfer and interlingua (AI-type knowledge bases representing the more innovative tendency). The needs of translators were left to commercial interests: software for terminology management became available and ALPNET produced a series of translator tools during the 1980s – among them it may be noted was an early version of a program "Translation Memory" (a bilingual database).
Machine Translation in 1990s
The real emergence of translator aids came in the early 1990s with the "translator workstation", among them were such programs as "Trados Translator Workbench", "IBM Translation Manager 2", "STAR Transit", "Eurolang Optimizer", which combined sophisticated text processing and publishing software, terminology management and translation memories.
In the early 1990s, research on machine translation was reinforced by the coming of corpus-based methods, especially by the introduction of statistical methods ("IBM Candide") and of example-based translation. Statistical (stochastic) techniques have brought a reliase from the increasingly evident limitations and inadequacies of previous exclusively rule-based (often syntax-oriented) approaches. Problems of disambiguation, refraining from repetition and more idiomatic generation have become more solvable with corpusbased techniques. On their own, statistical methods are no more the answer in contrast to rule-based methods, but there are now prospects of improved output quality which did not seem reachable 15 years ago. As many observers have indicated, the most promising approaches will probably integrate rule-based and corpus-based methods. Even outside research environments integration is already evident: many commercial machine translation systems now incorporate translation memories, and many translation memory systems are being enriched by machine translation methods.
The main feature of the 1990s has been the rapid increase in the use of machine translation and translation tools. The globalization of commerce and information is placing increasing demands upon the provision of translations. It means not only continuing (maybe even accelerating) growth of the use by multinational companies and translation services of systems to assist in the production of good quality documentation in many languages – by the use of machine translation and translation memory systems or by multilingual document authoring systems, or by combinations of both. Until recent times, the production of translations has been seen essentially as a self-contained activity. For large users, the appearance of translation systems has stimulated the integration of translation and documentation (technical writing and publishing) processes. Translation is now seen as one stage in the processes of communication and getting information. Future products for such kind will not be separate independent machine translation systems, translator workstations or translation tools, but multilingual documentation software complexes combining document creation, translation and revision, document archiving, information analysis, restoration and extraction, etc. in order to satisfy the specific needs of companies.
Machine Translation Quality
Despite the prospects for the future, it has to be said that the new approaches of the present have not yet resulted notable improvements in the quality of the raw output by translation systems. These improvements may come in the future, but overall it has to be said that at present the actual translations produced do not represent major advances on those made by the machine translation systems of the 1970s. We still see the same errors: wrong pronouns, wrong prepositions, anomalous syntax, incorrect choice of terms, plurals instead of singulars, wrong tenses, etc. – errors that no human translators would ever commit. Unfortunately, this situation probably won't change in the near future. There is little sign that basic generalpurpose machine translation programs are soon going to show significant advances in translation quality. And I think that if producers of machine translating systems are still to continue sating market with software of low quality (as in present) the whole machine translation industry may be condemned for ever by the general public as producers of essentially poor-quality software, that could possibly cause damaging of the research and development or even its closure.
In order not to be unsubstantiated I would like to present examples of translation by the programs of machine translation which are the most widely distributed in Ukraine – "Promt" and "Magic Gooddy" (same producer), "Pragma", "Socrat" and one web-resource which provides on-line real-time translation. Their work will be presented on the basis of translation of the extract from the British newspaper article:
The Sunday Times:
Egypt has been training British MI5 and MI6 agents in how to combat Islamic terrorists, underlining Cairo’s growing importance to the war against terror and the Middle East peace process.
A senior Middle Eastern military intelligence official revealed last week that British officers had undergone the training as part of a co-operation programme with Egypt that began after the September 11 attacks on America in 2001 and continued until last year.
Details have not been revealed, but it is believed to have included instruction in specialised interrogation techniques and in the terminology used by terrorists, which will enable agents to understand monitored telephone conversations.
Promt XT (Magic Gooddy):
Египет обучил британский MI5 и MI6 агентов при том, как сразиться с Исламскими террористами, подчеркивая важность роста Каира к войне против ужаса{террора} и ближневосточного мирного процесса.
Старшее Ближневосточное военное должностное лицо сведений{интеллекта} показало на прошлой неделе, что британские чиновники{офицеры} подверглись обучению как часть программы сотрудничества с Египтом, который начал после 11 сентября нападения на Америку в 2001 и продолжался до прошлого года.
Детали не были показаны, но это, как полагают, включило инструкцию в специализированные методы допроса и в терминологию, используемую террористами, которые позволят агентам понять проверенные телефонные беседы.
Socrat:
Египет готовил British MI5 и агентов MI6 в как, чтобы бороться террористов Islamic, подчеркивающих Каир растущего значения в войну против террора и мирный процесс Среднего Востока.
Старший Средний Восточный военный чиновник разведки обнаруживал прошлую неделю, которую Британские должностные лица подверглись подготовку как часть программы сотрудничества с Египтом, который начинался после Сентябрьские 11 атак в Америке в 2001 и продолженной до прошлого года.
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