TRANSLATION& THE HIGH TECH INDUSTRY

INTRODUCTION

Translation has been existing ever since mythology began, passed the prophethood, and now in modern times with modern machines. Times have changed, but still translation is a mean to connect people and help them communicate with each other, just like technology.

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND BETTER THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF MACHINE TRANSLATION, WE MUST KNOW FIRST WHAT ARE THE BASICS OF TRANSLATION DEMAND.

TYPES OF TRANSLATION DEMAND

•Dissemination: quality expected from human translators.•Assimilation: lower level of quality, in style; needed for a minimum amount of time.•Interchange: a one-to-one communication (via telephone, letter, diplomatic exchanges).•Information access: for multilingual systems of information retrieval, extraction, or databse access.

RESEARCHES HAVE BEEN MADE SINCE 1940`S IN ORDER TO ENHANCE THE TRANSLATION AIDED BY MACHINES.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDSince 1940s there has been research on the computers application for translating languages (Hutchins 1986). For many years, the systems were based primarily on direct translations via bilingual dictionaries, with relatively little detailed analysis of syntactic structures. By the 1980s advances in computational linguistics allowed much more sophisticated approaches, and a number of systems adopted an indirect approach to the task of translation.

THERE HAS BEEN SEVERAL, THE MOST KNOWN ONES ARE:SYSTRAN, LOGOS, AND FUJITSU. SOME OF THESE HAVE IMPROVED, BUT ONE OF THEM HAS BEEN CONFINED INTO TRANSLATING FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER AND VICEVERSA.

MT SYSTEMS FOR MAINFRAME COMPUETRS•SYSTRAN (originally from Russian to English)

•LOGOS (originally from German to English)

•FUJITSU (confined to translate from English to Japanese and viceversa)

THE FIRST ONES WERE INSTALLED IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENTAL AND MILITARY SERVICES.

GOVERNMENTAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE•1970, USA Air Force installed Systran for translating from Russian to English all the documents and scientific and military papers, with 90% accuracy.

•1976, The European Commission installed Systran system for translating from English to French.

PRODUCING BETTER OUTCOMES OF THE MT TRANSLATIONS

PRODUCTION OF TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATIONIt was difficult to get accurate documents from MT, so there were post-editors, who will check the translation done by the translating systems and then make it good enough to be published (for it was highly set up with technical words, needed to be translated according to the field).

Almost all works are needed in great amounts, so it was best to check them before copying them. It later became a matter of economics.

SYSTEMS FOR SPECIFIC FIELDS AND TRANSLATED INT DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

CONTROLLED LANGUAGE AND DOMAIN-SPECIFIC SYSTEMSThere are several companies that offer services that are fit to the customer’s needs, means, the system they create are fit to match and translate the specific field in which the customer specializes.

Example: TITUS is a high constrained sublanguage system for translating abstracts of textile documents into four languages.

THERE ARE SEVERAL, BUT SOEM OF THEM ARE MOSTLY KNOWN FOR THE COMPANY WHERE IT COMES FROM OR EITHER FOR ITS QUALITY.

SYSTEMS FOR PERSONAL COMPUTERS•PIVOT from NEC

•ASTRANSAC from TOSHIBA

•HICATS from HITACHI

•PENSEE from OKI

•DUET from SHARP

THE LINK BETWEEN THE MACHNE, THE WORLD WIDE WED AND HUMAN NATURAL TRANSLATION SYSTEMS.

MT ON THE INTERNET•SYSTRAN

•LOGOS

•GLOBALINK

•FUJITSU

•JICST

•NEC

CONCLUSION

In the near future or far future, maybe there will be a need for translation systems that will transfer meaning from one language to another but with the application of the chosing of different dialects from within one language.

REFERENCE

http://www.foreignword.com/technology/art/Hutchins/hutchins99.htm

FOR YOUR ATTENTION

MOHSINA S. HAFESJI