New Directions in Machine Translation : Conference Proceedings, Budapest, Hungary, August 18–19, 1988

Although our short conference has witnessed no spectacular achievement in the Machine Translation research, it has clearly shown that MT keeps growing both in width and in depth. The variety of topics and approaches discussed at the meeting is characteristic of the new situation in the research, which displays more and more detailed analyses, subtly articulated systems, as well as more distinctions in methods and attitudes. This also facilitates a more articulated discussion.

This collection of 13 original papers focuses on the phenomenon of politeness in language. It presents the most important problems in developing a theory of linguistic politeness, which must deal with the crucial differences between lay notions of politeness in different cultures and the term 'politeness' as a concept within a theory of linguistic politeness. The universal validity of the term itself is called into question, as are models such as those developed by Brown and Levinson, Lakoff, and Leech. New approaches are suggested. In addition to this theoretical discussion, an empirical section presents a number of case studies and research projects in linguistic politeness. These show what has been achieved within current models and what still remains to be done, in particular with reference to cross-cultural studies in politeness and differences between a Western and a non-Western approach to the subject.

Preface Contents Recent Developments in Machine Translation Language and the Computer Society The State of the Art in Machine Translation in the U.S.S.R. MT Research in China Pros and Cons of the Pivot and Transfer Approaches in Multilingual Machine Translation A Sublanguage Approach to Japanese- English Machine Translation ATAMIRI - Interlingual MT Using the Aymara Language The Architecture of DLT - Interlingual or Double Direct? Discourse Structure - Some Implications for Machine Translation What Is a Cross-Linguistically Valid Interpretation of Discourse? Advanced Terminology Banks Supporting Knowledge-Based MT Terminologia Esperanto-Centro Universal Applicability of Dependency Grammar Translating to and from Swedish by SWETRA - a Multilanguage Translation System Hungarian - a Special Challenge to Machine Translation? Learning from Translation Mistakes On Some Results of the Conference Index Dan Maxwell, Klaus Schubert, Toon Witkam (eds.). Summaries In Esperanto. Conference Sponsored By Bso, Utrecht, And The John Von Neumann Society, Budapest. Includes Bibliographies.