Computer science and translation
Salvatore Giammarresi, Guy Lapalme · Benjamins translation library · 2016
The authors present how computer scientists adapted concepts inspired by the process of translation between natural languages, and applied them to programming computers. Computers, being tireless interpreters of commands, raise some interesting questions for translation studies: what knowledge is necessary for the translation process? To what extent can it be automated? Does translation necessarily imply understanding of both source and target text? After a brief history of programming languages, the authors compare them with human languages and show how they differ in terms of context and ambiguity. They then show how machine translation, the most visible intersection between translation studies and computer science, has evolved from a cryptographer’s need to an almost everyday appliance. This evolution has been mostly technologically driven, often in spite of human translators and raises important questions regarding the future of translation studies.