importance of translation technology
► a concise history of machine and computerassisted translation
►technology available to translators ►negative and positive aspects of machine
►Do the new technologies threaten the livelihood of the translator?
►Does automation imply the disappearance of translation as we know it?
A Short History of Machine Translation
► in March 1947 Warren Weaver’s letter ►in July 1949 publicized his ideas ► In 1954 the first feasibility trial
►based on detailed bilingual dictionaries ►development of transformational generative
(Grenoble), SUSY (Saarbrücken, MU (Kyoto), and Eurotra (the European Union)
► 1990s vital developments
► creation of on-line machine translation services Altavista
MACHINE TRANSLATI ON
2.5 million pages
►and Taum-météo, created by the University of Montreal to translate weather forecasts from French to English.
Important advances
►1980s Logos ►most important projects were GETA-Ariane
The Translation Market
►new technology available ► political, social and economic need for
change
Europe & the United States
Japan
HUMAN TRANSLATI ON
300 million pages
translation ►main tools used in computer-assisted
translation ►impact of these new technologies on the
professional translator
Need for Translation Technology
critical report: slow, inefficient and twice as expensive as human translation ►stressed the need to encourage the development of tools
►Research continued in Canada, France and Germany and two machine translation systems came into being several years later: Systran, used by the European Union Commission
grammar models offer new possibilities
freeze
►semantic barriers ►ALPAC (Automatic Language Processing
Advisory Committee) ►In 1966 this committee produced a highly
►Two facts: ►Advances in information technology (IT) ►Modern communication requirements to
foster translation automation
► The cold war time ► Print culture vs screen culture ► enormous growth of information technology ► industry and commerce function more than ever
with the globalization ► The nature and function of translation affected ► countries to cooperate in many spheres ► different aspects of modern life
translation
►1900-2000 the idea of creating automatic dictionaries
►1930’s the Franco-Armenian George Artsrouni
►and the Russian Petr Smirnov-Troyanskii. ►1940’s The invention of the computer
► not enough human translators ►considered to be too expensive ►The economic necessity of finding a cheaper
soБайду номын сангаасution
questions
►Which computer tools are genuinely useful to translators?