Báo cáo khoa học: On the Problem of Mechanical Translation

HAVING STARTED WORK on mechanical translation, we arrived at the conclusion that both the lexical meaning and the morphological shape of the word can and should be utilized in analyzing the text, and that for purposes of translation it is impractical to omit the information which can be thus obtained. The utilization of the lexical meanings of words as well as of their contexts may also affect problems of coding. These questions are extremely important to automatic translation. We based our work on the following principles: 1. Maximum separation of the dictionary from the translation program. This enables us to...
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Báo cáo khoa học: "On the Problem of Mechanical Translation" [Mechanical Translation, vol.3, no.2, November 1956; pp. 42-43]On the Problem of Mechanical Translation †D. Panov, The Academy of Sciences, Moscow, U.S.S.R.HAVING STARTED WORK on mechanical trans- computer), a dictionary of 952 English andlation, we arrived at the conclusion that both 1,073 Russian words was compiled.the lexical meaning and the morphological shape For a number of English words (121 words,of the word can and should be utilized in analy- in our case), the place-in-the-vocabulary indi-zing the text, and that for purposes of transla- cation is replaced by special digit indication totion it is impractical to omit the information show that these words have multiple meaning.which can be thus obtained. The utilization of The proper Russian word is chosen in this casethe lexical meanings of words as well as of by utilizing a special program of automatictheir contexts may also affect problems of cod- translation, which we call the Polysemanticing. These questions are extremely important Dictionary.to automatic translation. If the spelling of the word in the text coincides We based our work on the following principles: exactly with that of a word in the dictionary, i.1. Maximum separation of the dictionary from e . , their numerical codes coincide, this factthe translation program. This enables us to can easily be established by the operation ofenlarge the dictionary easily without changing matching. This is the principle used for find-the program. ing words in the dictionary.2. Division of the translation program into two In order to find words in the dictionary whichindependent parts: analysis of the foreign lan- p ossess an affix (say, s or ing or ed), theguage sentence and synthesis of the correspond- machine must discard these endings after whiching Russian sentence. This enables us to uti- it must repeat the search for the word with thelize the same Russian synthesis program in discarded affix.translation from any language. To determine the meaning of a polysemantic3. Storing all the words in the dictionary in word, the words surrounding it in the giventheir basic form. This enables us to design sentence are analyzed. Both the semantic andthe program for synthesis of the Russian text the grammatical characteristics are established.according to the standard rules of Russian The routines for determining the particulargrammar. meaning of a polysemantic word are based on4. Storing in the dictionary all the constant an elaborate analysis of a great body of con-grammatical properties of words. crete material and are placed together in a5. Determination of multiple meanings of the special part of the translation program calledwords from the context, whereas their variant the polysemantic dictionary. Idiomatic ex-grammatical characteristics are determined by pressions are also included in this part of theanalyzing the grammatical structure of the program.sentence. It should be noted that the establishment of These principles have proved quite reliable the most simple and general criteria for deter- in the practice test to which they were subjected. mining a particular meaning of a word (or group Hence it seems to us that they constitute a re- of words) is the result of substantial prelimi- liable basis for the solution of the problem of nary work by our linguists on actual texts. MT. If a word in the sentence to be translated is The contents of the dictionary, for our expe- not found in the dictionary, it is stored unaltered riments, were determined by an analysis of in the memory of the machine. When the trans- mathematical textual material, starting with lated sentence is printed out, such a word will Milnes Numerical Solution of Differential be printed in Latin script. Equations. For the practical experiments, Investigations in the area of the dictionary which were carried out on the BESM (the USSR are fairly extensive. In our group they have Academy of Sciences high-speed electronic been carried out by L.N. Korolev. Of great importance is the space that a dic- tionary occupies in ...