Báo cáo khoa học: Computational Research in Arabic

In the preparation of an Arabic to English sentence-for-sentence mechanical translation program, a computer has been applied to the testing of statements concerning various phases of the morphological and syntactic structure of Arabic and structural equivalences between Arabic and English.
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Báo cáo khoa học: "Computational Research in Arabic" [Mechanical Translation, Vol.7, no.2, August 1963] Computational Research in Arabic by Arnold C. Satterthwait*, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology In the preparation of an Arabic to English sentence-for-sentence mechanical translation program, a computer has been applied to the test- ing of statements concerning various phases of the morphological and syntactic structure of Arabic and structural equivalences between Arabic and English, This paper discusses briefly the testing procedure used, the grammatical statements tested in the form of an Arabic sentence-con- struction grammar programmed for a computer and some results of the testing procedure applied to sentences randomly composed in Arabic by the computer. The research in Arabic at M.I.T. has been strongly definition of grammaticalness had been admitted. As ainfluenced by an original interest in the preparation of a result of this rewriting of the program, the computercomputer program for the translation of Arabic to Eng- has produced a satisfying number of sentences which dolish. It was initially recognized that it would be quite push to the borders of grammaticalness and perhapsimpossible to prepare, in one step, a mechanical trans- trespass beyond. As will be seen from the exampleslation program which would be capable of translating quoted in the following pages, the computer has pro-any modern Arabic text into English. It was, therefore, duced sentences and sequences which could never havedecided to make a general study of the problems of been imagined by the writer of this paper nor perhapsmechanical translation by attempting to produce a by any native-speaker of Arabic. Many of these sen-workable computer program which would translate a tences can be only termed nonsense sentences. Suchlimited corpus of Arabic. The corpus which the pro- sentences do, however, inspire numerous questionsgram would be capable of translating was to be defined which in turn serve as stimuli for further research. Suchby a restricted sentence-construction grammar which, being one purpose of the program, it is to be hoped thatwhen programmed for a computer, produced random the sentences presented in this paper will be read withsentences in Arabic. The sentences which the resulting this point kept constantly in mind.program is potentially able to produce represent only a As a result of the various freedoms and restrictionsvery limited number of all the sentences capable of built into the program, the grammar produces sentencesbeing composed in Arabic. However, the corpus de- of the following type.scribed by the grammar, limited even to the extent to /?a 1 yawma yastaqbilu 1 ?awlaadu 1 kibaaruwhich this one is, is much too extensive to be listed. haa?ulaa?i tilka 1 mu9allimaati 1 xaaşşaati 1 The sentences constructed by the computer under jamiylata hunaaka./control of this program are always verbal, declarative ‘These big boys will meet those beautiful tutorsstatements, each limited to one singly-transitive, im- there today.’perfect, indicative, active verb. The noun phrases con- Since the primary goal of all this research is the pro-tain no constructs or pronominal suffixes. All nouns are duction of a program for the translation of contemporaryanimate, referring only to persons. The verbs are either literary Arabic into English, the Arabic, whether gen-sound, hollow, or doubled. ...