Machine Translation and Multi-Lingual Text Processing

Cross-Language Text and Speech Retrieval

Volume

Papers from the 1997 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

In this paper, I look at some of the problems of Machine Translation (MT) as compared to multi-lingual text processing and text retrieval. In particular, I discuss the question of the evaluation of the output of MT systems, as opposed to the output of other NLP applications. Finally I raise the question of the political implications of the choice of input and output languages for MT systems within the larger context of a world where electronic communication renders access to textual information crucial for the maintenance of less established languages.