Translating Scientific Texts using MT and MAT Ssytems: Practical Experience of a Professional Translator

Olga Bezhanova


Abstract
The paper describes practical experience of a professional translator. The task consisted in translating 400 pages of Russian scientific materials (covering all fundamental sciences) into English within a month. The job was fulfilled using three computer-based systems: PARS, a Russian-English bidirectional machine translation system by Lingvistica '93 Co., Polyglossum, dictionary-support software by ETS Ltd., and the Random House electronic dictionary of the English language. The paper analyzes the pluses and minuses of translating scientific texts using computer programs, and gives numerous examples of translations. The main conclusion is that machine translation has no reasonable alternative when a large volume of scientific texts is to be translated professionally within a short period of time.
Anthology ID:
1997.mtsummit-papers.8
Volume:
Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit VI: Papers
Month:
October 29 – November 1
Year:
1997
Address:
San Diego, California
Editors:
Virginia Teller, Beth Sundheim
Venue:
MTSummit
SIG:
Publisher:
Note:
Pages:
106–114
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/1997.mtsummit-papers.8
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Olga Bezhanova. 1997. Translating Scientific Texts using MT and MAT Ssytems: Practical Experience of a Professional Translator. In Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit VI: Papers, pages 106–114, San Diego, California.
Cite (Informal):
Translating Scientific Texts using MT and MAT Ssytems: Practical Experience of a Professional Translator (Bezhanova, MTSummit 1997)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/1997.mtsummit-papers.8.pdf