John Hutchins

(England)

Multiple uses of machine translation and computerised translation tools

W. John Hutchins has published papers and books on linguistics, information retrieval, and in particular machine translation – most are available from his website (http://www.hutchinsweb.me.uk). He is active in the European Association for Machine Translation (president 1995-2004) and the International Association for Machine Translation (president, 1999-2001). Principal works in MT: Machine Translation: Past, Present, Future (Chichester: Ellis Horwood, 1986); An Introduction to Machine Translation [with Harold Somers] (London: Academic Press, 1992); editor of MT News International (1991-1997); editor of Early years in Machine Translation: Memoirs and Biographies of Pioneers (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000); compiler of Compendium of Translation Software (2000 to the present); and compiler of the Machine Translation Archive  (http://www.mt-archive.info) (2004 to the present).

Abstract

For many years MT systems and tools were used principally for the production of good-quality translations: either MT in combination with controlled (restricted) input and/or with human post-editing; or computer-based translation tools by translators. Since 1990 the situation has changed. Corporate use of MT with human assistance has continued to expand (particularly in the area of localisation) and the use of translation aids has increased (particularly with the coming of translation memories). But the main change has been the ever expanding use of unrevised MT output, such as online translation services (Babel Fish, Google, etc.), applications in information extraction, retrieval, intelligence services, news services, electronic mail, and much more. I shall describe the origins, development, current situation and possible futures of multiple usages and applications of computer-based translation technologies.