Translation is difficult, even for people. To begin with, you have to know two languages intimately. And even if you speak two or more languages fluently, it is not a trivial matter to produce a good translation. When people start talking about the possibility of a computer replacing a human translator, someone will often bring [...]
Barker Lectures on Machine Translation
Posters and Telescopes: an Introduction to Translation
Alan K. Melby | October 29, 2010 | 0 Comments
Some Difficulties in Translation
Alan K. Melby | December 16, 2010 | 0 Comments
One difficulty in translation stems from the fact that most words have multiple meanings. Because of this fact, a translation based on a one-to-one substitution of words is seldom acceptable. We have already seen this in the poster example and the telescope example. Whether a translation is done by a human or a computer, meaning [...]
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Does Mainstream Linguistic Theory Come to the rescue?
Alan K. Melby | February 10, 2011 | 0 Comments
Mainstream linguistic theory emphasizes grammatical relations in a sentence. It is essentially a sophisticated form of sentence diagramming. Depending on when and where you went to high school, you may have encountered sentence diagramming or you may have missed it entirely. A sentence diagram shows all the words of a sentence and how they fit [...]
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A Key Factor That Is Missing from Current Theories
Alan K. Melby | February 25, 2011 | 0 Comments
That key factor which is missing from current theories is agency. By agency, I mean the capacity to make real choices by exercising our will, ethical choices for which we are responsible. I will show a connection between agency and meaning. And since I have already shown that to translate we must consider meaning, I [...]
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Endnotes
Alan K. Melby | March 11, 2011 | 0 Comments
1. An example of the need to be sensitive to cultural factors is the translation of descriptions of items on a menu in a restaurant. Last year while in Paris, I passed by a billboard outside a well-known restaurant. The billboard advertised a dish called steak tartare. The description in English mentioned that it included [...]
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Annex – A showcase example of machine translation
Alan K. Melby | April 5, 2011 | 0 Comments
The following English sentence was taken from a source text chosen by a major machine translation vendor. The source text was translated by computer into French, German, and Spanish and the output was offered as an example of what machine translation is like when things go well. Even here, note the different ways the abbreviation [...]
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Machine Translation – What is machine translation?
Alan K. Melby | April 22, 2011 | 0 Comments
People who need documents translated often ask themselves whether they could use a computer to do the job. When a computer translates an entire document automatically and then presents it to a human, the process is called machine translation. When a human composes a translation, perhaps calling on a computer for assistance in specific tasks [...]
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Machine Translation – The Translation Tripod
Alan K. Melby | April 22, 2011 | 1 Comments
A translation project can be thought of as sitting on a tripod whose three legs are the source text, the specifications, and the terminology. If any of the three legs is removed, the project falls down. [Figure 1: 16k GIF] 4. Source text Obviously, no translation can be done without a source text (i.e., the [...]
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Machine Translation – Terminology Management
Alan K. Melby | April 29, 2011 | 0 Comments
Terminology must be managed in order to produce high-quality translations. When a specialized term is translated a certain way, that choice must be recorded and retrieved later so that later in the document or in a subsequent document the same translation equivalent is used for the same concept. In general language texts, it is undesirable [...]
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Attacks on Ambiguity
Alan K. Melby | May 30, 2011 | 0 Comments
There are two principal ways that these problems of ambiguity have been attacked. One is to attempt to provide the computer with real-world knowledge and a sense of the flow of discourse so that it can function just like a human. This approach is known as Artificial Intelligence. The other is to restrict the source [...]
Filed Under: Barker Lecture
