Machine Translation: Latest Developments
HAROLD L. SOMERS · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2012
This article attempts to locate MT (machine translation) in the contemporary context, while identifying its recent trends and themes. The 1990s were marked by the growing clout of empirical approaches, using increasingly available amounts of raw data in the form of parallel corpora. An appropriate instance is statistical MT, depending on bilingual corpus, but wherein, the translation depends on statistical modeling of the word order of target language and of source-target word equivalences. Example-based MT involves matching inputs against actual databases and identifying close matches. Successful MT, especially when attempting translation into languages marking gender of pronouns, those that have zero-anaphora contents, interpretation of anaphora assumes paramountcy. Regarding spoken-language MTs, coupling speech-to-text front-end and text-to-speech, the other way, is inadequate other than rigidly formal languages. More versatile operations such as dealing with dialogues, would involve greater complexities.