Machine translation

Machine translation (MT) is a form of translation where a computer program analyses the text in one language — the "source text" — and then attempts to produce another, equivalent text in another language — the target text — without human intervention.

Related Topics:
Translation - Language

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Currently the state of machine translation is such that it involves some human intervention, as it requires a pre-editing and a post-editing phase. Note that in machine translation, the translator supports the machine and not the other way around.

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Nowadays most machine translation systems produce what is called a "gisting translation" — a rough translation that gives the "gist" of the source text, but is not otherwise usable.

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However, in fields with highly limited ranges of vocabulary and simple sentence structure, for example weather reports, machine translation can deliver useful results.

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: Machine translation (MT) is the application of computers to the task of translating texts from one natural language to another. One of the very earliest pursuits in computer science, MT has proved to be an elusive goal, but today a number of systems are available which produce output which, if not perfect, is of sufficient quality to be useful in a number of specific domains.

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: Source: www.eamt.org, European Association for Machine Translation, EAMT, 1997.

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