Карагандинский Государственный Университет
им. академика Е.А. Букетова
The
impact of the Internet has been significant in recent years. We are already
seeing an accelerating growth of real-time on-line translation on the Internet
itself. In recent years, we have seen many systems designed specifically for the translation of Web
pages ("Pop-Up Dictionary", "Site Translator") and of
electronic mail ("SKIIN"). The demand for immediate translations will
surely continue to grow rapidly, but at the same time users are also going to
want better results. There is clearly an urgent need for translation systems
developed specifically to deal with the kind of colloquial (often wrongly
formed and badly spelled) messages found on the Internet. The old linguistics
rule-based approaches are probably not equal to the task on their own, and
corpus based methods making use of the massive data available on the Internet
itself are obviously appropriate. But as yet there has been little research on
such systems. At the same time as we are seeing this growing demand for
"crummy" translations, the Internet is also providing the means for
more rapid delivery of quality translation to individuals and to small companies.
A number of machine translation systems on the sale are already offering
translation services, usually "adding value" by human post-editing.
More will surely appear as the years go by.
However,
the Internet is having further profound impacts that will surely change the
future prospects for machine translation. There are predictions that the
stand-alone PC with its array of software for word-processing, databases and
games will be replaced by Network Computers which would download systems and
programs from the Internet at any time as required. In this scenario, the
one-off purchase of individually packaged machine translation software or
dictionaries would be replaced by remote stores of machine translation
programs, dictionaries, grammars, translation archives or specialized
glossaries which would obviously be paid for according to usage. It is should
be to said, that such a change would have profound effect on the way in which
machine translation systems are developed.
Another
profound impact of the Internet will concern the nature of the software itself.
What users of Internet services are seeking is information in whatever language
it may have been written or stored. Users will want a seamless integration of
information retrieval, extraction and summarization systems with translation
In
fact, it is possible that in a few years there will be fewer "pure"
machine translation systems (commercial or on-line) and many more
computer-based tools and applications in which automatic translation is just
one component. As a first step, it will surely not be long before all
word-processing software includes translation as an in-built option. Integrated
language software will be the norm not only for the multinational companies but
also available and accessible for anyone from their own computer (desktop,
laptop, notebook or network-based server) and for any device like television or
mobile telephone which interfacing with computer networks.
The
most widely anticipated development of the next decade must be that of speech
translation. When current research projects (ATR, C-STAR, JANUS, Verbmobil)
were begun in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was known that practical
applications were unlikely before the next century. The limitation of these
systems to small domains has clearly been essential for any progress, such are
the complexities of the task; but these limitations mean that, when practical
demonstrations are made, observers will want to know when broader coverage will
be realizable. There is a danger here that the mistakes of the 1950s and 1960s
might be repeated; then, it was assumed that once basic principles and methods
had been successfully demonstrated on small-scale research systems it would be
merely a question of finance and engineering to create large practical systems.
The truth was otherwise; large-scale machine translation systems have to be
designed as such from the beginning, and that requires many man-years of
effort. It is still true to say that the best written-language machine
translation systems of today are the outcome of decades of research and
development.
Whatever
the high expectations, it is surely unlikely that we will see practical speech
translation of significantly large domains for commercial exploitation for
another twenty years or more. Far more likely, and in line with general trends
within the field of written language machine translation, is that there will be
numerous applications of spoken language translation as components of
small-domain natural language applications, e.g. interrogation of databases
(particularly financial and stock market data), interactions in business
negotiations or intra-company communication.
Prompt
streams of an information exchange between the advanced industrial countries,
the avalanche action of the scientific and technical documentation acting from
manufacturers of the goods and current technologies, demand completely new
approach to a problem of translation of the technical literature. An exit one:
maximum to automate process, having left the person his creative editorial
part. In it the machine translation system helps. Its parameters should meet
four basic requirements:
•
efficiency;
•
flexibility;
•
speed;
•
accuracy.
Efficiency
of machine systems is an opportunity of constant renewal of a lexicon and
creation of new thematic dictionaries. In this parameter they considerably
outstrip habitual typographical editions of various dictionaries.
Flexibility
is an opportunity of «rough readjustments» on a concrete subject domain (for
this purpose the specialized dictionaries serve) and "thin
readjustments" on the concrete text, the book or group of documents
(modified user dictionaries).
Speed -
an opportunity of automatic input and processing of the text information from
paper carriers. Only one system of optical input of texts (OCR-System) daily
replaces more than ten class typists.
Accuracy
- stylistically and grammatically correct adequate handing on of sense of the
initial text on language of translation. This is the most
"vulnerable" place of machine translation systems. However such
obvious improvement of translation quality in late versions of machine
translation systems, as for example, PROMT XT, installs confidence that soon
the computer completely will take up all routine part of translation.
We have
found out that machine translation is an effective means for viewing and
information search in foreign language and this function is the main at work in
Internet. Undoubtedly, means of machine translation never can catch all
semantic nuances of the original text. Distinctions in syntax and semantics
between western and east languages, - we shall tell English and Chinese - are
too great for this purpose. Even adherent of machine translation recognize,
that it is capable to transfer the basic essence of the document at the best.
In
summary it would be desirable to emphasize, that the program - translator is,
first of all, the tool which allows to solve problems of translation or to
raise efficiency of work of the translator only in the event that it uses
competently.
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Бакулов А.Д., Леонтьева Н.Н. -
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Беляева Л.Н.,
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