🚀 go-pugleaf

Here are more consolidated answers to the original question from David
Loverne (lawyer@ufcc.ufl.edu):

     Picture this: I type a document in english on a word processor.
     Then I hit a command and a program translates the english into french.
     What is that kind of program called; what is the NAME of such a
     program; and how much does it cost?

Given the topic of machine translation, needless to say, many
wide-ranging opinions were generated (and, needless to say, I stand with
my moderator's hose, ready to douse any flames that ensue  :-]  ).

Jeff
INSOFT-L List Manager

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 Jeff Bowyer                         EMail:
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Sender: Paul Kenneth Deuter (pdeuter@netcom.com)

I have always heard this kind of software referred to as "CAT" software
for "Computer Aided Translation".  The Byte magazine article was
a good overview.  I believe the concensus is that all of this software
requires post-editing.  I know that ATT Language Line translation
services uses a CAT program for the first pass of translation.  There
is also a company here in Berkeley California called "Natural Language"
which has implemented a natural language database query system.  It
originally was written for Unix and required a ton of memory and disk.
They are doing a Windows version and may be collaborating with MS.
Anyhow their system works incredibly well.


Sender: Simon North (north@hgl.signaal.nl)

As the thread confirms, no such software exists and, based on what I have seen
of the recent experimental results at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam by
Prof. Martin, it will be many years before such software does exist.

At the word level, there are reasonable tools available (Vertaal for MS-DOS is
reasonable when used as a TSR with Word Perfect). Polygon (again MS-DOS) is
pretty good at set phrases but idioms (we still aren't far from the apocryphal
example of the English "out of sight, out of mind" being translated in the
Russian "invisible, mad", jargon and context-bound polysemous words have to be
pre and post edited by hand.

This said, however, as a professional translator, using simple lexical
translation (in fact I do a global "search and replace") I can get speeds of
up to 1500 words an hour on highly technical material (for example, currently
VLSI ASIC CAD/CAM software documentation).
The BYTE articles were in the January 1993 issue (not February), 5 articles,