Black Box 4/BlackBox.cdr/textinfo/langcomp.arj/CMPTRANS.TXT

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     Where Do Translators Fit Into Machine Translation?

     Original And Supplementary Questions

     MT SUMMIT III                   June 3, 1991
                    2:00 -- 3:45 PM

     Here are the original questions for this panel as
submitted to the speakers:

     1.  At the last MT Summit, Martin Kay stated that there
should be "greater attention to empirical studies of
translation so that computational linguists will have a
better idea of what really goes on in translation and develop
tools that will be more useful for the end user."  Does this
mean that there has been insufficient input into MT processes
by translators interested in MT?    Does it mean that MT
developers have failed to study what translating actually
entails and how translators go about their task?  If either
of these is true, then to what extent and why?  New answers
and insights for the MT profession could arise from hearing
what human translators with an interest in the development of
MT have to say about these matters.  It may well turn out
that translators are the very people best qualified to
determine what form their tools should take, since they are
the end users.

     2.  Is there a specifically "human" component in the
translation process which MT experts have overlooked?  Is it
reasonable for theoreticians to envision setting up
predictable and generic vocabularies of clearly defined
terms, or could they be overlooking a deep-seated human
tendency towards some degree of ambiguity--indeed, in those
many cases where not all the facts are known, an inescapably
human reliance on it?  Are there any viable MT approaches to
duplicate what human translators can provide in such cases,
namely the ability to bridge this ambiguity gap and improvise
personalized, customized case-specific subtleties of
vocabulary, depending on client or purpose?  Could this in
fact be a major element of the entire translation process?
Alternately, are there some more boring "machine-like"
aspects of translation where the computer can help the
translator, such as style and consistency checking?

     3.  How can the knowledge of practicing translators best
be integrated into current MT research and working systems?
Is it to be assumed that they are best employed as
prospective end-users working out the bugs in the system, or
is there also a place for them during the initial planning
phases of such systems?  Can they perhaps as users be the
primary developers of the system?

     4.  Many human translators, when told of the quest to
have machines take over all aspects of translation,
immediately reply that this is impossible and start providing
specific instances which they claim a machine system could
never handle.  Are such reactions merely the final nerve
spasms of a doomed class of technicians awaiting
superannuation, or are these translators in fact enunciating
specific instances of a general law as yet not fully
articulated?  Since we now hear claims suggesting that FAHQT
is creeping in again through the back door, it seems
important to ask whether there has in fact ever been
sufficient basic mathematical research, much less algorithmic
underpinnings, by the MT Community to determine whether
FAHQT, or anything close to it, can be achieved by any
combination of electronic stratagems (transfer, AI, neural
nets, Markov models, etc.).  Must translators forever stand
exposed on the firing line and present their minds and bodies
to a broadside of claims that the
next round of computer advances will annihilate them as a
profession?  Is this problem truly solvable in logical terms,
or is it in fact an intractable, undecidable, or provably
unsolvable question in terms of "Computable Numbers" as set
out by Turing, based on the work of Hilbert and Goedel?  A
reasonable answer to this question could save boards of
directors and/or government agencies a great deal of time and
money.


     SUPPLEMENTAL QUESTIONS


     It was also envisioned that a list of Supplemental
Questions would be prepared and distributed not only to the
speakers but everyone attending our panel, even though not
all of these questions could be raised during the session, so
as to deepen our discussion and provide a lasting record of
these issues.


     FAHQT: Pro and Con

     Consider the following observation on FAHQT: "The ideal
notion of fully automatic high quality translation (FAHQT) is
still lurking behind the machine translation paradigm: it is
something that MT projects want to reach." (1)  Is this a
true or a false observation?

     Is FAHQT merely a matter of time and continued research,
a direct and inevitable result of a perfectly asymptotic
process?

     Will FAHQT ever be available on a held-held calculator-
sized computer?  If not, then why not?

     To what extent is the belief in the feasibility of FAHQT
a form of religion or perhaps akin to a belief that a
perpetual motion device can be invented?


     Technical Linguistic Questions

     Let us suppose a writer has chosen to use Word C in a
source text because s/he did not wish to use Word A or Word
B, even though all three are shown as "synonyms."  It turns
out that all three of these words overlap and semantically
interrelate quite differently in the target language.  How
can MT handle such an instance, fairly frequently found in
legal and diplomatic usage?

     Virtually all research in both conventional and
computational linguistics has proceeded from the premise that
language can be represented and mapped as a linear entity and
is therefore eminently computable.  What if it turns out that
language in fact occupies a virtual space as a multi-
dimensional construct, including several fractal dimensions,
involving all manner of non-linear turbulence, chaos, and
Butterfly Effects?


     Post-Editors and Puppeteers

     Let's assume you saw an ad for an Automatic Electronic
Puppeteer that guaranteed to create and produce endless
puppet plays in your own living room.  There would be no need
for a puppeteer to run the puppets and no need for you even
to script the plays, though you would have the freedom to
intervene in the action and change the plot as you wished.
Since the price was acceptable, you ordered this system, but
when it arrived, you found that it required endless
installation work and calls to the manufacturers to get it
working.  But even then, you discovered that the number of
plays provided was in fact quite limited, your plot change
options even more so, and that the movements of the puppets
were jerky and unnatural.  When you complained, you were
referred to fine print in the docs telling you that to make
the program work better, you would have to do one of two
things: 1) master an extremely complex programming language
or 2) hire a specially trained puppeteer to help you out with
your special needs and to be on hand during your productions
to make the puppets move more naturally.  Does this
description bear any resemblance to the way MT has functioned
and been promoted in recent years?


     A Practical Example

     Despite many presentations on linguistic, electronic and
philosophical aspects of MT at this conference, one side of
translation has nonetheless gone unexplored.  It has to do
with how larger translation projects actually arise and are
handled by the profession.  The following story shows the
world of human translation at close to its worst, and it
might be imagined at first glance that MT could easily do a
much better job and simply take over in such situations,
which are far from atypical in the world of translation.
But, as we shall see, such appearances may be deceptive.  To
our story:

     A French electrical firm was recently involved in a
hostile take-over bid and law suit with its American
counterpart.  Large numbers of boxes and drawers full of
documents all had to be translated into English by an almost
impossible deadline.  Supervision of this work was entrusted
to a paralegal assistant in the French company's New York law
firm. This  person had no previous knowledge of translation.
The documents ran the gamut from highly technical electrical
texts and patents, records of previous law suits, company
correspondence, advertisements, product documentation,
speeches by the Company's directors, etc.  Almost every
French-to-English translator in the NYC area was asked to
take part.  All translators were required to work at the law
firm's offices so as to preserve confidentiality.  Mere
translation students worked side by side with newly
accredited professionals and journeymen with long years of
experience.

    The more able quickly became aware that much of
the material was far too difficult for their less experienced
colleagues.  No consistent attempt was made to create or
distribute glossaries.  Wildly differing wages were paid to
translators, with little connection to their ability.
Several translation agencies were caught up in a feverish
battle to handle most of the work and desperately competed to
find translators.  No one knows the quality of the final
product, but it cannot have been routinely high.  Some
translators and agencies have still not been fully paid.  As
the deadline drew closer, more and more boxes of documents
appeared.  And as the final blow, the opposing company's law
firm also came onto the scene with boxes of its own documents
that needed translation.  But these newcomers imposed one
nearly impossible condition, also for reasons of
confidentiality: no one who had translated for the first law
firm would be permitted to translate for them.


     Now let us consider this true-life tale, which occurred
just three months ago, and see how--or whether--MT could have
handled things better, as is sometimes claimed.  Let's be
generous and remove one enormous obstacle at the start by
assuming that all these cases of documents were in fact in
machine-readable form (which, of course, they weren't).  Even
if we accord MT this ample handicap, there are still a number
of problems it would have had trouble coping with:

     1.  How could a sufficient number of competent post-
editors be found or trained before the deadline?

     2.  How could a sufficiently large and accurate MT
dictionary be compiled before the deadline?  Doesn't creating
such a dictionary require finishing the job first and
then saving it for the next job, in the hope that it
will be similar ?

     3.  The simpler Mom & Pop store & smaller agency
structure of the human translation world was nonetheless able to
field at least some response to this challenge because of
its large slack capacity.  Would an enormously powerful and
expensive mainframe computer have the same slack capacity,
i.e., could it be kept inactive for long periods of
time until such emergencies occurred?  If so, how would this
be reflected in the prices charged for its services?

     4.  How would MT companies have dealt with the secrecy
requirement, that translation must be done in the
law firm's office?

     5.  How would an MT Company comply with the demand of
the second law firm, that the same post-editors not be
used, and still land the job?

     6.  Supposing the job proved so enormous that two MT
firms had to be hired--assuming they used different
systems, different glossaries, different post-editors, how
could they have collaborated without creating even
more work and confusion?


     Larger Philosophical Questions


     Is it in any final sense a reasonable assumption, as
many believe, that progress in MT can be gradual and
cumulative in scope until it finally comes to a complete
mastery of the problem?  In other words, is there a numerical
process by which one first masters 3% of all knowledge and
vocabulary building processes with 85% accuracy, then 5% with
90% accuracy, and so on until one reaches 99% with 99%
accuracy?  Is this the whole story of the relationship
between knowledge and language, or are there possibly other
factors involved, making it possible for reality to manifest
itself from several unexpected angles at once.  In other
words, are we dealing with language as a linear entity when
it is in fact a multi-dimensional one?


     Einstein maintained that he didn't believe God was
playing dice with the universe.  Is it possible that by using
AI rule-firing techniques with their built-in certainty and
confidence values, computational linguists are playing dice
with the meaning of the that universe?


     It would be possible to design a set of "Turing Tests"
to gauge the performance of various MT systems as compared
with human translation skills.  The point of such a process,
as with all Turing Tests, would be to determine if human
referees could tell the difference between human and machine
output.  All necessary safeguards, handicaps, alternate
referees, and double blind procedures could be devised,
provided the will to take part in such tests actually
existed.  True definitions for cost, speed, accuracy, and
post-editing needs might all have at least a chance of being
estimated as a result of such tests.  What are the chances of
their taking place some time in the near future?


     "Computerization is the first stage of the industrial
revolution that hasn't made work simpler."  Does this
statement, paraphrased from a book by a Harvard Business
School professor, (2) have any relevance for MT?  Is it
correct to state that several current MT systems actually add
one or more levels of difficulty to the translation process
before making it any easier?


     While translators may not be able to articulate
precisely what kind of interface for translation they most
desire, they can certainly state with great certainty what
they do NOT want.  What they do not want is an interface that
is any of the following:


          harder to learn and use than conventional
      translation;

          more likely to make mistakes than the above;

          lending less prestige than the above;

          less well paid than the above.

Are these also concerns for MT developers?


     What real work has been done in the AI field in terms of
treating translation as a Knowledge Domain and translators as
Domain Experts and pairing them off with Knowledge Engineers?
What qualifications were sought in either the DE's or the
KE's?

     Are MT developers using the words "asymptote" and
"asymptotic" in their correct mathematical sense, or are they
rather using them as buzzwords to impart a false air of
mathematical precision to their work?  Is the curve their
would-be asymptote steadily approaching a representation of
FAHQT or something reasonably similar, or could it just turn
out to be the edge of a semanto-linguistic Butterfly Effect
drawing them inexorably into what Shannon and Weaver
recognized as entropy, perhaps even into true Chaos?


     Must not all translation, including MT, be recognized as
a subset of two far larger sets, namely writing and human
mediation?  In the first case, does it not therefore become
pointless to maintain that there are no accepted standards
for what constitutes a "good translation," when of course
there are also no accepted standards for what constitutes
"good writing?"  Or for that matter, no accepted standards
for what constitutes "correct writing practices," since all
major publications and publishing houses have their own in-
house style manuals, with no two in total agreement, either
here or in England.  And is not translation also a
specialized subset of a more generalized form of "mediation,"
merely employing two natural languages instead of one?  In
which case, may it belong to the same superset which includes
"explaining company rules to new employees," public relations
and advertising, or choosing exactly the right time to tell
Uncle Louis you're marrying someone he disapproves of?  Are
not the only real differences between foreign language translation
and such upscale mediation that two languages are involved and the
context is usually more limited?  In either case (or in both
together), what happens if  all the complexities that can
arise from superset activities descend into the subset and
also become  "translation problems?" at any time?  How does
MT deal with either of these cases?


     Does the following reflection by Wittgenstein apply to
MT: "A sentence is given me in code together with the key.
Then of course in one way everything required for
understanding the sentence has been given me.  And yet I
should answer the question `Do you understand this
sentence?': No, not yet; I must first decode it.  And only
when e.g. I had translated it into English would I say `Now I
understand it.'
     "If now we raise the question `At what moment of
translating do I understand the sentence? we shall get a
glimpse into the nature of what is called `understanding.'"
To take Wittgenstein's example one step further, if MT is
used, at what moment of translation does what person or
entity understand the sentence?  When does the system
understand it?  How about the hasty post-editor?  And what
about the translation's target audience, the client?  Can we
be sure that understanding has taken place at any of these
moments?  And if understanding has not taken place, has
translation?


     Practical Suggestions for the Future

     1.  The process of consultation and cooperation between
working translators and MT specialists which has begun here
today should be extended into the future through the
appointment of Translators in Residence in university and
corporate settings, continued lectures and workshops dealing
with these themes on a national and international basis, and
greater consultation between them in all matters of mutual
concern.

     2.  In the past, many legislative titles for training
and coordinating workers have gone unused during each
Congressional session in the Department of Labor, HEW, and
Commerce.  If there truly is a need for retraining
translators to use MT and CAT products, it behooves system
developers--and might even benefit them financially--to find
out if such funding titles can be used to help train
translators in the use of truly viable MT systems.

     3.  It should be the role of an organization such as MT
Summit III to launch a campaign aimed at helping people
everywhere to understand what human translation and machine
translation can and cannot do so as to counter a growing
trend towards fast-word language consumption and use.

     4.  Concomitantly, those present at this Conference
should make their will known on an international scale that
there is no place in the MT Community for those who falsify
the facts about the capabilities of either MT or human
translators.  The fact that foreign language courses, both
live and recorded, have been deceitfully marketed for decades
should not be used as an excuse to do the same with MT.  I
have appended a brief Code of Ethics document for discussion
of this matter.

     5.  Since AI and expert systems are on the lips of many
as the next direction for MT, a useful first step in this
direction might be the creation of a simple expert system
which prospective clients might use to determine if their
translation needs are best met by MT, human translation, or
some combination of both.  I would be pleased to take part in
the design of such a program.



     DRAFT CODE OF ETHICS


     1.  No claims about existing or pending MT products
should be made which indicate that MT can reduce the number
of human translators or the total cost of translation work
unless all costs for the MT project have been scrupulously
revealed, including the total price for the system, fees or
salaries for those running it, training costs for such
workers, training costs for additional pre-editors or post-
editors including those who fail at this task, and total
costs of amortization over the full period of introducing
such a system.

     2.  No claims should be made for any MT system in terms
of "percentage of accuracy," unless this figure is also
spelled out in terms of number of errors per page.  Any
unwillingness to recognize errors as errors shall be
considered a violation of this condition, except in those
cases where totally error-free work is not required or
requested.

     3.  No claim should be made that any MT system produces
"better-quality output" than human translators unless such a
claim has been thoroughly quantified to the satisfaction of
all parties.  Any such claim should be regarded as merely
anecdotal until proved otherwise.

     4.  Researchers and developers should devote serious
study to the issue of whether their products might generate
less sales resistance, public confusion, and resentment from
translators if the name of the entire field were to be
changed from "machine translation" or "computer translation"
to "computer assisted language conversion."

     5.  The computer translation industry should bear the
cost of setting up an equitably balanced committee of MT
workers and translators to oversee the functioning of this
Code of Ethics.

     6.  Since translation is an intrinsically international
industry, this Code of Ethics must also be international in
its scope, and any company violating its tenets on the
premise that they are not valid in its country shall be
considered in violation of this Code.  Measures shall be
taken to expose and punish habitual offenders.



     Respectfully Submitted by
     Alex Gross, Co-Director
     Cross-Cultural Research Projects
     & Chair, MT Committee,
     New York Circle of Translators

                                                            14


     P.O. Box 660--Cooper Station
     New York, NY 10276
     uucp:  [e-mail]
     CIS#:  71071,1520


     (1)  Kimmo Kettunen, in a letter to Computational
Linguistics, vol. 12, No. 1, January-March, 1986

     (2)  (2)  Shoshana Zuboff: In the Age of the Smart
Machine: The Future of Work and Power, Basic Books, 1991.