Fallible rationalism and machine translation
Geoffrey R Sampson · 1983
Approaches to MT have been heavily influenced by changing trends in the philosophy of language and mind. Because of the artificial hiatus which followed the publication of the ALPAC Report, MT research in the 1970s and early 1980s has had to catch up with major developments that have occurred in linguistic and philosophical thinking; currently, MT seems to be uncritically loyal to a paradigm of thought about language which is rapidly losing most of its adherents in departments of linguistics and philosophy. I argue, both in theoretical terms and by reference to empirical research on a particular translation problem, that the Popperian "fallible rationalist" view of mental processes which is winning acceptance as a more sophisticated alternative to Chomskyan "deterministic rationalism" should lead MT researchers to redefine their goals and to adopt certain currently-neglected techniques in trying to achieve those goals.