Machine Translation: Its Scope and Limits (Studies in Natural Language Processing)

Machine translation (MT) systems are used to the benefit of many people and organizations worldwide. However, so far an indisputably accurate, high-quality and fully-automatic MT system is yet to be produced, leading to suggestions that such an achievement is impossible. Machine Translation: Its scope and Limits is a collection of essays by Yorick Wilks on the past, present and future of MT, in which he argues against this claim. His discussion of MT's past is centred around the 'Artificial Intelligence' approach, and he explains the present day situation by highlighting current issues in MT, such as the application of linguistic resources and theories, IBM's statistical approach, and research into MT undertaken by the US Government in 1990. The book's final section discusses new models such as a pragmatics-based MT, sense projection and lexical tuning, and their place in the future of MT as both a discipline and a commercial enterprise.