Early years in machine translation

Memoirs and biographies of pioneers

Edited by W. John Hutchins

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000

[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, vol.97]

ISBN: 90 272 4586; 1 55619 013 3

[For copyright reasons, the contents of this volume are not available online; contact the publisher]

Table of contents

Preface vii

Common abbreviations x

Acknowledgements, Cyrillic transliteration xi

The first decades of machine translation: overview, chronology, sources – John Hutchins 1

Warren Weaver and the launching of MT: brief biographical note – John Hutchins 17

Erwin Reifler and machine translation at the University of Washington – Lew R. Micklesen 21

Early research at M.I.T.: in search of adequate theory – Victor H. Yngve 39

Machine translation at Harvard – Anthony G. Oettinger 73

The Georgetown project and Leon Dostert: recollections of a young assistant – Muriel Vasconcellos 87

Is FAHQ(M)T possible? Memories of Paul L. Garvin and other MT colleagues – Christine A. Montgomery 97

The early days of GAT-SLC – Michael Zarechnak 111

Machine translation: just a question of finding the right programming language? – Antony F. R. Brown 129

From Serna to Systran – Peter Toma 135

My early years in machine translation – Winfred P. Lehmann 147

David G. Hays – Martin Kay 165

Gilbert W. King and the USAF Translator – John Hutchins 171

Translation and the structure of language – Sydney M. Lamb 177

Pioneering MT in the Soviet Union – Olga S. Kulagina 197

Machine translation and formal linguistics in the USSR – Igor A. Mel’čuk 205

My memoirs of MT in the Soviet Union – Tat’jana N. Mološnaja 227

MT in the former USSR and in the Newly Independent States (NIS): pre-history, Romantic era, prosaic time – Raimund G. Piotrovskij 233

Machine translation: early years in the USSR – Jurij N. Marčuk 243

The beginnings of MT – Andrew D. Booth and Kathleen H. V. Booth 253

R. H. Richens: translation in the NUDE – Karen Sparck-Jones 263

Margaret Masterman – Yorick Wilks 279

Yehoshua Bar-Hillel: a philosopher’s contribution to machine translation – John Hutchins 299

Silvio Ceccato and the correlational grammar – Ernst von Glasersfeld 313

Early MT in France – Maurice Gross 325

Bernard Vauquois’ contribution to the theory and practice of building MT systems: a historical perspective – Christian Boitet 331

Pioneer work in machine translation in Czechoslovakia – Zdeněk Kirschner 349

Alexander Ljudskanov – Elena Paskaleva 361

Memoirs of a survivor – Hiroshi Wada 377

Index of names 387

Index of subjects 394

Location of photographs

Participants at US conferences xii

Weaver, Reifler, Yngve, Oettinger 16

Dostert, Garvin, Zarechnak, Toma 146

Brown, Lehmann, lamb 196

Participants at USSR conference; Mel’čuk, Mološnaja, Reformatskij 232

Marčuk, Piotrowski, Booth 252

Richens, Masterman, Ceccato 298

Sgall, Wada, Vauquois 386