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- From: veronica@cs.toronto.edu (Veronica Archibald)
- Subject: Peter F. Brown, 10 December 1992: AI
- Message-ID: <92Nov17.172228est.48044@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
- Date: 17 Nov 92 22:22:47 GMT
- Lines: 37
-
-
- Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
- (GB = Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street)
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------
-
- AI
- GB221, at 11:00 a.m., 10 December 1992
-
- Peter F. Brown
- IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
-
- " A Statistical Approach to Machine Translation "
-
- In 1949, Warren Weaver proposed that statistical techniques from the
- emerging field of information theory might make it possible to use
- modern digital computers to translate text from one natural language
- to another automatically. Although Weaver's scheme foundered on the
- rocky reality of the limited computer resources of the day, we feel
- that the increase in computer power over the last forty years makes
- reasonable a new look at the applicability of statistical techniques
- to translation.
-
- We have developed a rudimentary model of the translation process and
- have used it to construct a glossary of English words and French
- phrases. We assume that each English word is either deleted during
- translation, or used to produce one or more French words. We further
- assume that if French words are produced for an English word, then
- each is produced independently of the rest and depends only on the
- English word itself. Finally, all of the French words are shuffled
- around in the sentence in a way that depends on the position of the
- English words in the English sentence.
-
- We have also implemented a procedure for searching for the most
- probable English translation of a French sentence and have used this
- procedure to attain preliminary translation results.
-
-