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Lecture 2
Machine Translation

I Opposite views on the problem

When people start talking about the possibility of electronic devices to replace a
human translator, two opposite views on the problem arise. Some believe that there is
no fundamental difference between humans and machines. They assume that the quality
of machine translation will someday rival the quality of human translation in all
respects. They point out that computers can do arithmetic much faster and more
accurately than people. Then they remind us that mathematics is harder than language
for many students. Furthemore, they take it as obvious that the human brain is
ultimately a type of computer. From this basis, they conclude that it is just a matter of
time until we have a new kind of computer that will function like the brain, only faster
and better, and will surpass the capabilities of humans in the area of language
processing. Other take a contrary position. They believe that humans and computers are
so entirely different in the way they work inside that computers will never approach the
capabilities of human translators.

II Ambiguity problem in translation

There are obviously a number of problems in the machine translation but these
problems stem from the ambiguity of meanings. Ambiguity is the property of language
units to bear several different meanings. For example, the English sentence “A bare
conductor ran in the car” is so ambiguous that it has become a translator`s joke (not
“голий кондуктор бігав по вагону” but “у вагоні прокладeно неізальований
провід”). Why does this sentence make the words and the relations between them so
ambiguous? The answer is: because there is no direct link between an image of the real
world and the form of a word, that is, others simply do not see what you mean. So, our
task is to get rid of the ambiguity in the process of translation. This is called
disambiguation, and there are three disambiguation tools:
1. Context environment
2. Situation
3. Background information
If you are discussing, say an electrical installation, you will, perhaps, have no
doubt that a wire rather than a person is understood by the word ”conductor” in the
given above example.
However neither the context nor the situation alone will lead you to the correct
answer, unless you already have the relevant background information which is your
common sense, your knowledge of the way the things are in life.
For example, you will understand the sentence “The cranes are flying” as
“Летять журавлі” because from your life experience you know that the lifting
machines (крани) cannot fly.

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