【正文】 n in 1954 (by IBM and Geetown University). ? The decade of optimism (19541966): ALPAC (Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee) report in 1966: there is no immediate or predictable prospect of useful machine translation. A brief history of MT (cont) ? The aftermath of the ALPAC report (19661980): a virtual end to MT research ? The 1980s: Interlingua, examplebased MT ? The 1990s: Statistical MT ? The 2022s: Hybrid MT Q7: where are we now? ? Huge potential/need due to the inter, globalization and international politics. ? Quick development time due to SMT, the availability of parallel data and puters. ? Translation is reasonable for language pairs with a large amount of resource. ? Start to include more “minor” languages. MT in a nutshell ? What is the ultimate goal of translation? ? What are the perfect translations? ? Can human always get perfect translations? ? Can machines be as good as humans? ? What are MT good for? ? What is the MT history? ? Where are we now? Outline ? MT in a nutshell ? Major challenges in MT ? Major approaches ? Evaluation of MT systems Major challenges in MT Major challenges ? Getting the right words: – Choosing the correct root form – Getting the correct inflected form –Inserting “spontaneous” words ? Putting the words in the correct order: –Word order: SVO vs. SOV, … – Unique constructions: – Divergence Lexical choice ? Homonymy/Polysemy: bank, run ? Concept gap: no corresponding concepts in another language: go Greek, go Dutch, fen sui, lame duck, Chinese idioms, … ? Coding (Concept ? lexeme mapping) differences: – More distinction in one language: ., kinship vocabulary. – Different division of conceptual space: More distinction: the “cousin” example Translations: male/female, older or younger than the speaker, from mother or father?s side, parent?s brother or sister?s child: ? 堂兄 (tang xiong): father?s brother?s son, who is older ? 堂弟 (tang di): father?s brother?s son, who is younger ? 表兄 (biao xiong): – 姨表兄 (yi biao xiong): mother?s sister?s son, who is older – 舅表兄 (jiu biao xiong): mother?s brother?s son, who is older – 姑表兄 (gu biao xiong): father?s sister?s son, who is older ? 表弟 (biao di): mother?s sibling?s son, who is younger – … ? … 16+ translations ? 8 ? 4. More distinction: the “aunt” example Mother?s or father?s side, is a sister or is a brother?s wife: ? 姑媽： father?s sister ? 伯母： father?s younger brother?s wife ? 嬸： father?s elder brother?s wife ? 姨媽： mother?s sister ? 舅媽： mother?s brother?s wife A large happy family ? 三姨姥爺： mother?s mother?s 3rd sister?s husband. ? 3rd among all the sisters, or among all the siblings, or among all the members in the extended family with the same “bei fen”. ? Same “bei fen”： same distance to the root node of a family tree. SapirWhorf hypothesis ? Edward Sapir (18841936): American linguist and anthropologist. ? Benjamin Lee Whorf (18971941): Sapir?s student. ? Linguistic determinism/relativism: the language we use to some extent determines the way in which we view and think about the world around us. ? Strong determinism: language determines thought, that language and thought are identical. ? Weak determinism: thought is merely affected by or influenced by our language. SapirWhorf hypothesis (cont) ? “Snow” – Whorf: the number of words for “snow” the Inuit people have for ?snow? ? Inuit people treat snow differently than someone who lives in a less snowdependent environment. – Pullum (1991): Other languages transmit the same ideas using phrases instead of single words. ? My personal experience: – Preference of one language over the other: Color coding study ? Hypothesis: if one language categorizes color differently than another language, then the different groups should perceive it differently also. ? A 1970 study – Task: give people a sample of 160 colors and ask them to sort it. – People: English speakers (bluegreen distinction) and Berinmo speaker (nolwor distinction) –