Báo cáo khoa học: A Programming Language for Mechanical Translation

A notational system for use in writing translation routines and related programs is described. The system is specially designed to be convenient for the linguist so that he can do his own programming. Programs in this notation can be converted into computer programs automatically by the computer.
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Báo cáo khoa học: "A Programming Language for Mechanical Translation" [Mechanical Translation, vol.5, no.1, July 1958; pp. 25-41] A Programming Language for Mechanical Translation† Victor H. Yngve, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts A notational system for use in writing translation routines and related programs is d escribed. The system is specially designed to be convenient for the linguist so that he can do his own programming. Programs in this notation can be converted into computer programs automatically by the computer. This article presents com- p lete instructions for using the notation and includes some illustrative programs. rather simple procedure can be an exacting taskIT HAS BEEN SAID that the automatic digital r equiring a high degree of skill on the partcomputer can do anything with symbols that we o f the programmer.can tell it in detail how to do. If we are inter-ested in telling a digital computer to translate I t has been the custom for the linguist whotexts from one language into another language, wanted to try out a certain approach to mechan-we are faced with two tasks. We first have to i cal translation to ask an expert programmerf ind out in detail how to translate a text from t o program his material rather than to learnone language to another. Then we have to tell t he art of programming himself. Besides thethe computer how to do it. This paper is con- usual inconveniences and difficulties attendingcerned with the second task. We will present t he communication between experts in twoh ere a specially devised language in which the s eparate fields, this practice has certain morel inguist can conveniently tell the computer b asic difficulties: Neither the linguist nor theto do things that he wants it to do. programmer has been able to be fully effective. T he linguist has not become aware of the full T he automatic digital computer has been de- p ower of the machine, and the programmer,s igned to handle mathematical problems. It is n ot being a linguist, has not been able to usea ble to carry out complicated routines in his special knowledge of the machine with fullt erms of a few different kinds of elementary effectiveness on linguistic problems.o perations such as adding two numbers, sub- The solution offered here to these difficultiestracting a number from another number, mov- i s an automatic programming system. Thei ng a number from one location to another, tak- l inguist writes the results of his research in ai ng its next instruction from one of two places notation or language called COMIT, which hasdepending on whether a given number is negative b een specially devised to fill his needs. Theo r positive, and so on. In order to instruct the p rogrammer writes a conversion program orc omputer to carry out complicated routines, compiler capable of converting anything writtens imple instructions for the elementary opera- in this notation into a program that can be runt ions are combined into a program. The writ- on the computer.* Thus the expense, time, anding of a program to carry out even an apparently effort needed to separately program each lin- g uistic approach is saved, and, even more im- p ortant, the linguist is given direct access to the machine. He becomes more fully aware of† This work was supported in part by the U. S. i ts potentialities, and his research is greatlyA rmy (Sig ...