Abstract
Although the first ideas for mechanical translation were made in the seventeenth century, it was not until this century that means became available for realization with the appearance of the electronic computer in the mid 1940s. Fifty years ago, in March 1947 Warren Weaver wrote to Norbert Wiener and met Andrew Booth, mentioning to both the use of computers for translation. The possibilities were investigated during the next seven years, until in January 1954 the first prototype program was demonstrated. This article is a brief chronicle of these early years of mechanizing translation processes.- Anthology ID:
- 1997.mtsummit-plenaries.2
- Volume:
- Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit VI: Plenaries
- Month:
- October 29 – November 1
- Year:
- 1997
- Address:
- San Diego, California
- Venue:
- MTSummit
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- Note:
- Pages:
- 14–23
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/1997.mtsummit-plenaries.2
- DOI:
- Cite (ACL):
- John Hutchins. 1997. First steps in Mechanical Translation. In Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit VI: Plenaries, pages 14–23, San Diego, California.
- Cite (Informal):
- First steps in Mechanical Translation (Hutchins, MTSummit 1997)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/auto-file-uploads/1997.mtsummit-plenaries.2.pdf