Bulletin Vol. 7 No. 4 Dec 1970

After a careful study of the materials and comparison of the various methods adopted by other machine-translation research groups, the Centre staff considered the Computing Centre of the University in a most advantageous position to conduct research into the translation of Chinese into English by computer, and this research work has been actively pursued since September 1969. The Centre staff have developed an approach in which grammatical analysis becomes possible in the process of machine translation. The machine dictionary used contains not only the source- language and target-language equivalent, but also a set of codes by means of which the information contained in the dictionary can be used to activate the algorithmic portion. These codes will be both grammatical and semantic, since in effect the algorithmic portion must perform both automatic parsing and semantic ambiguity resolution on the input text, and therefore needs both types of information. In this way, the translation will become more and more accurate if more information is coded into the dictionary. A simple translation is given below: 「我們在討論會中討論電腦翻譯的可能性。我們的電 子計算機是 IBM-113(1。 它有八千個記憶單位。電腦 翻譯的系統設計十分複雜。它考慮每一個詞的結 構。每一個詞有它自己的意思。它在一個句子中是 名詞，它在另一個句子中是動詞。電腦翻譯的程式 設計在這樣的情況下變得十分困難。」 "WE DISCUSS THE POSSIBILITY OF MACHINE TRANSLATION IN SEMINAR. OUR ELECTRONIC COMPUTER IS IBM 1130. IT HAS EIGHT THOUSAND MEMORY LOCATIONS. THE SYSTEM DESIGN OF MACHINE TRANSLATION IS VERY COMPLICATED. IT CONSIDERS THE STRUCTURE OF EVERY WORD. EVERY WORD HAS ITS OWN MEANING. IT IS A NOUN IN A SENTENCE. IT IS A VERB IN ANOTHER SENTENCE. THE PROGRAMMING DESIGN OF MACHINE TRANSLATION BECOMES VERY DIFFICULT UNDER SUCH CONDITIONS." After one year's experiment on the I BM- 1130, this approach has given encouraging and promising results and simple standard Chinese sentences can be translated without difficulty and obvious grammatical errors. The modification from one version to another appears to be easier than other approaches. M e m b e r s o f t h e S e n a t e Chairman: Dr. Choh-Ming Li, Vice-Chancellor Members: Presidents of the three Colleges Mr . T.C. Cheng Dr. Y.P. Mei Dr. C.T. Yung College Vice-Presidents and members in lieu of Vice-Presidents Mr. R.N. Rayne Mr. Wang Chi Mr. N.H. Young Professors Prof. Eric Ax i l r od Prof. Chen Cheng-siang Prof. Chou Fa-kao Prof. N.E. Fehl Prof. S.C. Joseph Fu Prof. B. Glassburner Prof. J. Hohenberg Prof. Hsu Bay-sung Prof. Shou-sheng Hsueh Prof. Loh Shiu-chang Prof. Mou Jun-sun Prof. J. Nehnevajsa Prof. Tang Chun-i Prof. Irving B. Tebor Prof. Harry Wang One Reader in respect of each academic subject wherein no Professor is appointed Dr. Kuen Charles Kao — 4 —