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Matthews, G. H.

Yngve, V. H.

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XIV. MECHANICAL TRANSLATIONV. H. Yngve U. C. Dickman K. C. KnowltonJ. R. Applegate M. Dyck R. B. LeesA. N. Chomsky E. S. Klima G. H. MatthewsA. A COMPILER-INTERPRETER FOR MECHANICAL TRANSLATIONIt has been said that an automatic digital computer can do anything with symbols thatwe can order it to do. If we are interested in telling a digital computer to translate acertain text from one language into another language, we are faced with two tasks. Ourfirst task is to find out how to translate the text. Our second task is to "tell" the com-puter how to do it. The first task is a problem for skilled linguists. In connection withthe second task, we have been developing a programming language in which the linguistcan conveniently "tell" the computer to do things that he wants it to do. We have com-pleted a description of the programming language, and the programming necessary forconverting a program written in the programming language into a 704 computer programis under way.In the past, it has been the custom for the linguist who wanted to try out a certainapproach to mechanical translation to ask an expert programmer to program his mate-rial rather than to learn how to program it himself. In addition to the usual inconven-iences and difficulties that attend communication between experts in two separate fields,this practice has a further disadvantage: Neither the linguist nor the programmer hasbeen able to be fully effective. The linguist has not been aware of the full power of themachine, and the programmer, not being a linguist, has not been able to use his specialknowledge of the machine with full effectiveness on linguistic problems.The availability of an adequate programming language promises to be of greatassistance in linguistic research in mechanical translation. The linguist can write theresults of his research in a notation especially devised to fill his needs. The program-ming for the computer is taken care of once and for all by an automatic programmingsystem. Thus the expense, time, and effort needed to program each linguistic approachseparately is saved, and, even more important, the linguist is given direct access tothe machine. He becomes more fully aware of its potentialities, and his work is greatlyfacilitated.Besides serving for the programming of linguistic problems, our programming lan-guage can also be of assistance to other potential users of computers. It is a very con-venient programming method for problems that involve a considerable amount ofmanipulation of arbitrary symbols and very little, if any, arithmetic. It is quite easy,for example, to program algebraic manipulations.V. H. Yngve, G. H. MatthewsThis work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.176

Mechanical Translation

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