Báo cáo khoa học: Some Problems in the Mechanical Translation of German

RELATIVE CLAUSES The problems discussed are those of syntactical ambiguity and multimeaning in translating relative pronouns from German to English. The former, which is of concern for the English word order, arises from the coexistence in German of homomorphous inflections and variable word order, the latter from this combined with gender dissimilarities in the two languages.
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Báo cáo khoa học: "Some Problems in the Mechanical Translation of German" [Mechanical Translation, vol.5, no.2, November 1958; pp. 60-66]Some Problems in the Mechanical Translation of GermanLeonard Brandwood, Birkbeck College, London, England*I. RELATIVE CLAUSES T he problems discussed are those of syntactical ambiguity and multimeaning in t ranslating relative pronouns from German to English. The former, which is of c oncern for the English word order, arises from the coexistence in German of h omomorphous inflections and variable word order, the latter from this combined w ith gender dissimilarities in the two languages. Some statistics are given of the frequency with which such ambiguities were encountered in scientific texts, and some p ossible solutions or partial solutions discussed.OUR CONCERN will be primarily with the prob- without a preposition the feminine dative formlems of word order and multimeaning, and with i s very seldom encountered. For instance, in samples of text amounting to about 30, 000 wordsthese not in all their aspects — which would be i t never occurred once, while the masculinet oo vast a subject for a short article — but nominative occurred over 50 times. In the sec-o nly in connection with one particular part of o nd type of ambiguity the dative form is like-s entence structure, the relative clause. w ise rare without a preposition, preference be- B esides relative adverbs, such as worin. i ng given to the formally distinct denen. Thed arin , etc., which cause no difficulty, German p resence of a preposition, on the other hand,u ses three words to introduce relative clauses d oes not solve the problem as before, unless— der, welcher and was. Certain grammatical t he preposition is of the type which can be con-forms of these are common to two cases, with s tructed either with accusative or with dative,t he result that the syntactical function of such but not with both.forms is ambiguous, the types of ambiguity be- However, we need not continue to discuss thei ng three in number. s olution of these first two types, since it will be contained in that of the main problem, the1. The masculine singular nominative of der distinction of nominative from accusative in thea nd welcher i s identical to the feminine singu- f eminine and neuter singular and the plural ofl ar dative. a ll genders.2. T he masculine singular accusative of wel- In English the functions of subject and directc her is identical to the dative plural. o bject in a relative clause are indicated by the fact that, when the relative pronoun is the sub-3. T he nominative form is identical to the ac- j ect, the direct object is separated from it byc usative in the feminine singular of der a nd t he verb, e.g.,w elcher, i n the neuter singular of der , welchera nd was , and in the plural (all genders) of der A nimals which eat men.a nd welcher. W hen the relative pronoun is the direct ob-The first two types are rare in comparison with j ect, the subject occurs on the same side of thet he third, the first especially so, because it can v erb, e.g.,a rise only when the relative pronoun is not pre- A nimals which men eat.c eded by a preposition. If it is preceded by ap reposition, it is thereby denoted as the femi- I n German this distinction cannot be made byn ine dative, since no preposition is constructed the position of the verb because of the rule thatw ith the nominative case. On the other hand, i n a subordinate clause the verb must normally c ome at the end. How, then, are we to deter- mine the function of the relative pronoun in those instances where the form of the relative provides* Now at the University ...