Bulletin Autumn 1976

Machine Translation Research at CUHK Introduction The application of computer to the translation of natural languages has been an intellectual challenge to the computer scientists as well as linguists, ever since the introduction of computer to the scientific world in the late 1940's. Hong Kong being a truly bilingual society, the importance of translation has always been emphasized and the Chinese University has endeavoured to bring translation into its academic programme. The establishment of the Translation Centre in 1971 and the subsequent introduction of the minor degree programme in Translation are the results of its total efforts. Machine Translation (MT) research at the University was initiated by Professor Loh Shiu-Chang in late 1969, to study the possibility of automatic translation from Chinese into English by computer techniques. The preliminary survey, after studying the sentence structures and linguistic complexity of the Chinese scientific texts, particularly mathematics, both syntactically and semantically, indicates clearly that mathematics being an exact science, is relatively easy to tackle, and Fully Automatic High-Quality Translation (FAHQT) is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, but some practical machine translation system involving the collaboration between man and machine is feasible. In September 1971 ， the machine translation project under the direction of Professor Loh was formally established with a grant from The Asia Foundation. The aim of the project was, of course, the collection and study of the linguistic data of both the Chinese source and the English target languages, particularly in the field of mathematics, for the purpose of designing and constructing a practical machine translation system. The proposed system, when completed, should be capable of translating Chinese mathematical texts taken mainly from Acta Mathematica Sinica (數學學報 )(which is published quarterly by Peking Academy of Sciences) into readable, but grammatically correct, English. CULT (Chinese University Language Translator) The first machine translation system, CULT, was designed and tested in October 1972. In the following month, a demonstration to the members of the council and the senate of the University was held and several mathematical and biochemistry texts taken from Kexue Tong Bao ( 科學通報 )we r e translated. Fig. 1 is one of the mathematical papers translated at the demonstration. In subsequent years, many improvements and modifications have been made to the machine translation system. Difficulties encountered in linguistics, both syntax and semantics, and in the programming have been identified and rectified. As a result, CULT has become more refined in structure and efficient in operation. The present translator shown in Fig. 2 consists of four modules, namely (1) Dictionary lookup procedures employing the largest matching principle (2) Syntactic analyser-to determine precisely the role that the individual word plays in the sentence i.e. to which part of speech the word belongs, whether noun, verb etc. The process is accomplished by means of a rather sophisticated true-false table. (3) Semantic analyser and (4) Output procedures for arranging the output sentences. Translation of Acta Mathematica Sinica Since January 1975 ， the machine translation system, CULT, has been used regularly in translating the Chinese mathematical journal called Acta Mathematica Sinica, published quarterly by the Academy of Sciences, Peking. The subscribers are mainly from the well-known international university libraries, mathematical institutes and research institutes. Among them are University of California (Los Alamos Scientific Library), Stanford University of U.S.A., British Library of U.K., CSIR Library of South Africa, CSIRO Library of Australia, Trondheim University of Norway, Montreal University of Canada, Canterbury University of New Zealand,