This wonderful book is not just for people actively involved in machine translation. Anyone with an interest in the history of computational linguistics will find much to relish and learn from in this weighty collection of articles past. Lest we forget, MT was one of the first nonnumerical applications proposed for the digital computer following the Second World War, and its often tumultuous 50-year history has had a significant impact on the entire field of computational linguistics. Indeed, this very journal can trace its lineage back to the journal whose original title was Mechanical Translation.
Though not a proper history of MT, Readings in Machine Translation
is certainly a historical collection. The editors have sought to bring together in one volume “the‘classical’ MT papers that researchers and students want, or should be persuaded, to read” and that, alas, are often so difficult to find. For this alone, Nirenburg, Somers, and Wilks deserve our gratitude. The volume begins with the famous memorandum that Warren Weaver sent out to some 200 professional acquaintances in 1949,which is generally taken to mark the genesis of machine translation; and the most recent paper included dates back to the fourth MT Summit in 1993. The 36 articles that span the intervening period are said to constitute “MT’s communal inheritance.
”By what criteria were the papers selected? The editors cite three: personal taste; the aforementioned problem of availability, which is certainly a real one, particularly in the case of some of the early classics; and historical significance, which is said to be the main criterion for inclusion in the volume. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Readings in Machine Translation (Sergei Nirenburg, Harold Somers, Yorick Wilks)