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MT and the Future. Eduard Hovy Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, IBM chair, 1943 “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
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MT and the Future Eduard Hovy Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” • Thomas Watson, IBM chair, 1943 • “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” • Ken Olson, founder of Digital Corp., 1977 • “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” • William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), 1899 • “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” • Albert Einstein, 1932
My predictions • MT will be included in every web search engine and in every emailer. • MT will be available for almost all language pairs. • MT quality will remain more or less where it is now.
Facts and trends • The need for translation is growing • More text, in all languages, is available online • More MT resources (dictionaries, NLP engines, parallel corpora) are available online • The internet connects people and resources in unprecedented ways
The next 5 years—research • The MT quality barrier will remain • Statistical techniques will make new MT engines, for new languages, much faster to build. • Result: MT for almost all language pairs • Statistical techniques will finally transition into the commercial world • New automated evaluation metrics will be developed
The next 5 years—commerce • MT will be included in every web search engine and in every emailer. • After L&H, the other MT companies’ business will pick up, but there’s no reason for complacency • The internet provides a giant EBMT resource. Companies will exploit this to: • create their own, growing, parallel corpora using translators • locate appropriate translations dynamically, index them (like web search companies), and provide dynamic stitch-together MT on demand
Unlocking the future… …courtesy of Magi Inc.