Bulletin Number One 1987

Research Activities Machine Translation (MT) research at this University was initiated by Professor Loh Shiu-Chang in late 1969 to study the possibility o f 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, indicated clearly that mathematics being an exact science, was relatively easy to tackle, and Fully Automatic H igh-Quality Translation (FAHQT) was extremely d ifficu lt, i f not impossible, to achieve, but some practical machine translation system involving the collaboration between man and machine would be feasible. In September 1971 ， the Machine Translation Project was formally established w ith a grant from The Asia Foundation. The aim o f the project was the collection and study o f the linguistic data o f both the Chinese source and the English target languages, particularly in the field o f mathematics. Mathematical texts from the Acta Mathematica Sinica were trans­ lated into readable and grammatically correct English. The first machine translation system, CULT (Chinese University Language Translator) was designed and tested in October 1972. In subsequent years, many improvement and modifications were made to the system. As a result, CULT has become more refined in structure and efficient in operation. On 1st April, 1978 ， the Hung On-To Memorial Fund denoted a sum o f HK$500,000 in support o f the Machine Translation research, and the Hung On- To Research Centre for Machine Translation was established. A PDP 11/34 computer system was installed for research purposes. On 8th December, 1978 ， the Loh's Keyboard for inputting ideographic characters was invented. With this keyboard, it was possible to use the latest computer and laser beam techniques to typeset Chinese characters. This tech­ nological breakthrough to put Chinese typesetting on an equal footing w ith the west was a success. It could handle Japanese characters also. The ingenious use o f Loh's Keyboard ， the computer and the laser technol­ ogy heralded a new era for ideographical type o f publishing. Chinese Inform a tion Processing System 16 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS