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Explore the current landscape of machine translation in America, covering developments in commercial MT, MT research, deployment on the web, and the impact on the translation industry. Discover the shift towards data-driven paradigms and the rise of computer-assisted translation tools.
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MT Development, Research and Deployment:Where do we stand in America? Elliott Macklovitch Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA)
Caveat emptor • This is a vast topic! • America is a very big place... • I don't pretend to have all the information • Globalisation: • increasingly difficult to partition the world into hermetic geographic regions • many of the major players now present and active on all the continents
Developments in commercial MT • almost all vendors of general-purpose MT who targeted professional TRs have either gone out of business, or are doing a very different kind of business today • most significant development in last 10 years! • tells us something very important about classic model of MT collaboration (= post-editing)
Where have the MT engines gone? • Onto the Web, of course! • “free translation” for a surprising range of L's : http://www.eamt.org/resources/index.html • or embedded as an add-on to other applications, e.g. IR (AltaVista) or on-line chat (Amikai) • online MT is rendering a great public service • … but can it turn a profit?
MT Research • MT research is definitely on the upswing! • in universities as well as in the private sector, e.g. Microsoft, AT&T, IBM • almost all the new projects are (at least partially) in the data-driven paradigm • SMT: @ ISI, AT&T, UofMaryland, IBM • EBMT: @ Microsoft • the empirical vs. rationalist debate is dead
MT Research - 2 • Why this renewal of interest & investment in MT research now? • growing globalisation increases the demand for multilingual documentation • existing MT technology still not up to the task • the looming crisis in the translation industry • the rewards for even a partial solution will be substantial
Computer-assisted Translation • if preceding analysis is correct, CAT tools should be in strong demand -- and they are! • but Translation Memory technology seems to have peaked • cost-effective only for highly repetitive texts • exploits only a small portion of the knowledge residing in translators’ past production • freelancers resent receiving TM output
Other types of CAT tools • in Canada, a number of new bi-textual IR systems on the market: • TSrali.com: Web-based bilingual concordancer • LogiTerm, MultiTrans: term management plus bi-textual IR on translation service archives • novel applications for probabilistic translation models • TransType: a new take on interactive MT
Conclusions • translation industry is booming in America! • MT's market share remains relatively marginal • MT has migrated to the Web, where it is rendering a great public service (gisting) • yet few professional TRs use MT day-to-day • the paradigm shift in NLP: the effects on translation automation are just beginning to be felt