Last update:
8 September 2010
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Early Years in Machine TranslationMemoirs and biographies of pioneers
2000. xii, 400 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 4586 1 / EUR 130.00 978 1 58811 013 8 / USD 195.00
Machine translation (MT) was one of the first non-numerical applications of the computer in the 1950s and 1960s. With limited equipment and programming tools, researchers from a wide range of disciplines (electronics, linguistics, mathematics, engineering, etc.) tackled the unknown problems of language analysis and processing, investigated original and innovative methods and techniques, and laid the foundations not just of current MT systems and computerized tools for translators but also of natural language processing in general. This volume contains contributions by or about the major MT pioneers from the United States, Russia, East and West Europe, and Japan, with recollections of personal experiences, colleagues and rivals, the political and institutional background, the successes and disappointments, and above all the challenges and excitement of a new field with great practical importance. Each article includes a personal bibliography, and the editor provides an overview, chronology and list of sources for the period.
Table of contents
“It follows the growth of an intellectual community with international scope from the beginning, even in the cold war era. It is the very best source for finding out what really went on in the early years of this field that is rapidly growing in importance with the growth of the internet.”
Victor H. Yngve
“It is the very best source for finding out what really went on in the early years of this field that is rapidly growing in importance. [...] It holds several important lessons and deserves close study by people involved in public policy as it impacts and is impacted by science and technology.”
“It holds several important lessons and deserves close study by people involved in public policy as it impacts and is impacted by science and technology.”
“Although the book is a compilation of articles from the original MT pioneers, [...] that cover the time span from the early 50s, until the mid 70s, this is not a limit because most of today's commercially available MT systems are based on the linguistic techniques and technologies that were designed and implemented during that period.”
“Those of us who have endured conference presentations in which eager authors present long-discarded Machine Translation (MT) theories at the latest and greatest ideas should welcome a book which puts previous research in perspective.”
“In capturing and preserving this impressively wide-ranging collection of reminiscences, John Hutchins has made a huge and enormously valuable contribution to our understanding of the ideas, personalities, and external forces that shaped the early development of machine translation and computational linguistics and that set in motion many of the activities in those areas that are still ongoing today. I heartily recommend this book not only for readers engaged in those or related fields, but also for anyone with an interest in the history of science.”
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Linguistics