Machine translation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT, is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another. At its basic level, MT performs simple substitution of words in one natural language for words in another. Using corpus techniques, more complex translations may be attempted, allowing for better handling of differences in linguistic typology, phrase recognition, and translation of idioms, as well as the isolation of anomalies.
Current machine translation software often allows for customisation by domain or profession (such as weather reports) — improving output by limiting the scope of allowable substitutions. This technique is particularly effective in domains where formal or formulaic language is used. It follows then that machine translation of government and legal documents more readily produces usable output than conversation or less standardised text.
Improved output quality can also be achieved by human intervention: for example, some systems are able to translate more accurately if the user has unambiguously identified which words in the text are names. With the assistance of these techniques, MT has proven useful as a tool to assist human translators, and in some cases can even produce output that can be used "as is". However, current systems are unable to produce output of the same quality as a human translator, particularly where the text to be translated uses casual language.
See also
- Comparison of machine translation applications
- Statistical machine translation
- Artificial Intelligence
- Cache language model
- Computational linguistics
- Universal Networking Language
- Computer-assisted translation and Translation memory
- Controlled natural language
- Fuzzy matching
- Postediting
- History of machine translation
- Human Language Technology
- Language barrier
- List of emerging technologies
- List of research laboratories for machine translation
- Pseudo-translation
- Translation
- Translation memory
- Universal translator
- Phraselator
- Mobile translation
- Reverso (language tools)
