Báo cáo khoa học: mechanical determination of the constituents of german substantive compounds

The MT process comprises four distinctive sub-processes called the input, the identification of input forms, the translation process proper and the output. Initially certain linguistic phenomena seemed likely to prevent the complete mechanization of the identification process. The problem is the following.
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Báo cáo khoa học: " mechanical determination of the constituents of german substantive compounds" [Mechanical Translation vol.2, no.1, July 1955; pp. 3-14] 3mechanical determination of the constituents of germansubstantive compounds Erwin Reifler, Far Eastern Department, University of Washington, Seattle tion of compounds by means of the mechanical The MT process comprises four distinc- identification of their constituents. This would tive sub-processes called the input, the identifi- result in a welcome reduction of the size of the cation of input forms, the translation process proper mechanical memory. It is true that the matching and the output. Initially certain linguistic phe- of each compound would be replaced by the nomena seemed likely to prevent the complete m atching of its two or more constituents, and mechanization of the identification process. The t he design of the matching mechanism would problem is the following. have to include provisions for the dissection of Identification presupposes a record of compounds into their constituents. Nevertheless, things remembered, with which everything to be because of the comparatively low frequency of identified is compared. An essential feature of all most compounds, dissection would not be very MT systems will be the “mechanical memory” frequent and would be amply compensated for by which corresponds to the bi-lingual dictionary plus the reduction in the size of the mechanical memory the knowledge at the disposal of the human trans- and the resulting decrease in access time. lator. The head entries of this memory will con- There are, however, two problems which s ist of individual free and bound forms and c omplicate the situation. One is the fact that i diomatic sequences. All input units whether the semantic content of many constituents differs they be words, portions of words, or groups of according to whether they are bound or free forms. words will first have to be identified with their The second is that the conventional written form “memory equivalents” before their “output of the majority of the compounds of certain impor- e quivalents” can be determined mechanically. tant languages lacks graphic indication of the Many important languages include large “seam” between their constituents. Moreover, numbers of compound words which, though they many compounds permit more than one dissection are mostly of low frequency, are essential for into constituents identifiable in the mechanical understanding the context in which they occur. memory. In most cases, however, only one of These compound words are made up of a compara- these is linguistically correct, whilst those in which t ively small number of constituents, many of ...