NEC Develops World's First, Japanese-Chinese Automatic, Speech Translation Software Operable on PDA

Tokyo - Jan 6, 2006 (PRN): NEC Corporation today announced that it has succeeded in the development of the world's first, automatic, Japanese < - > Chinese speech translation software, capable of real-time, speech-to-speech translation of travel-related Chinese and Japanese conversation on a PDA (mobile information terminal).

Operable on a commercial PDA, the newly developed automatic translation software boasts a rich vocabulary of 50,000 Japanese and 36,000 Chinese words, and realizes automatic speech-to-speech interpretation of travel conversation. A wide range of travel conversation used in a variety of travel situations was taken into consideration during the development of the software, and it has principally been enabled by the realization of speech recognition of general conversation of standard spoken Chinese (Mandarin/Putonghua). Although standard spoken Chinese is the same nationwide, accents differ according to region, making speech recognition complex. In order to combat this issue, data of spoken conversation was gathered from a large number of people from different regions in China, allowing the creation of a large-scale Chinese-conversation speech corpus (note*). This enabled the realization of speech recognition of general Chinese conversation, regardless of the origin of the accent of the person conversing.

The features of this software include:
(1) A parallel, large-vocabulary, continuous speech recognition engine, which is built with a database consisting of a wide range of conversation sounds and words that enables accurate speech recognition of spoken words.
(2) A compact translation engine for translation of spoken words.
(3) An advanced wave-concatenative speech synthesis engine, which realizes high-performance reading through an advanced, wave-concatenative speech synthesis method based on a wide range of speech data.
(4) A total integration module that controls collaborative operation of the speech recognition engine, the machine translation engine and the speech synthesis engine, realizing real-time, automatic Japanese <-> Chinese speech translation on a PDA.

In recent years, with the advancement of an information society and increased freedom of movement across borders, the dynamic development of technology supporting automatic speech interpretation and translation to support communication between different languages is rapidly progressing. In particular, travel for business and leisure between China and Japan is increasing at a rapid pace and with it the need for Japanese <-> Chinese translation.

History of NEC's automatic speech translation software research and development:

1999: automatic Japanese <-> English translation software for notebook PCs
2002: PDA-operational Japanese <-> English travel conversation, automatic speech translation software
2005: speech-to-speech translation software capable of being processed on low-power-consumption multi-core processors, optimal for small devices such as mobile phones Although NEC's automatic speech translation software research has been focused on Japanese <-> English translation to date, NEC has been able to realize Japanese <-> Chinese speech translation software by installing a newly created large-scale Chinese language conversation speech corpus, a Chinese travel conversation text corpus, and an acoustic model and a language model that were developed based on both of these, in the compact, high speed speech recognition engine that NEC has been able to create owing to many years of research in this area.

NEC will continue to advance research of its speech recognition and language processing technologies toward the realization of a society where communication is possible anytime, anywhere.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701)(NASDAQ: NIPNY)(UK: NEC.IL) is one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network, and enterprise business solutions dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of its diverse and global base of customers. Ranked as one of the world's top patent-producing companies, NEC delivers tailored solutions in the key fields of computers, networking, and electron devices by integrating its technical strengths in IT and networks and by providing advanced semiconductor solutions through NEC Electronics Corporation. The NEC Group employs more than 140,000 people worldwide and had net sales of 4,855 billion yen (approx. $45.4 billion) in the fiscal year that ended in March 2005. For additional information, please visit the NEC website at: http://www.nec.com

EAMT 11th Annual Conference

19-20 June 2006, Oslo, Norway

First Call For Papers

The European Association for Machine Translation will hold a major conference in Oslo, Norway on 19-20 June, 2006. This meeting is the eleventh in a series of regular events acting as a forum for the exchange of ideas concerning all aspects of Machine Translation and computer-aids/tools for translator. The purpose of the EAMT events is to bring together users, developers and researchers to discuss the latest developments in the field.
The event will be held as a full-scale Conference, with a large diversity of topics, a large number of expected participants and papers, as well as the normal kind of services provided as part of the conference environment.
The conference will focus in particular but not exclusively on experiences and expectations of users of MT systems and translation aids, or CAT tools but contributions from developers, vendors, researchers and teachers will be welcomed, too. (For information about previous workshops and conferences see the EAMT website: http://www.eamt.org/)
The Special Theme for this Conference will be
Machine Translation/Translation Aids - tools to increase quality and to save money
including
user experiences, potential user expectations,
user applications incorporating MT modules,
evaluation of existing and new MT systems,
integration and synergy of CAT tools and MT,
new approaches in computer-assisted translation (CAT),
issues for developers and users of MT and translation aids,
quality and economic aspects of MT
Papers demonstrating real-life applications of MT and CAT technologies are particularly welcome. However, papers relating to other aspects of MT, and other multilingual applications, will also be considered
Papers will be presented in two different categories:
Oral session: papers are presented as 20-30 minute lectures, allowing for 5-10 minutes of Q&A.
Poster session: papers are presented as posters in the exhibition area near the conference room, with 2 or 3 poster sessions of 90 minutes each.
Submission of papers:
We invite submissions as short versions of full papers (6 pages). Submissions should be uploaded before 31st of January 2006 to the conference tool website: http://eamt.emmtee.net/submission in RTF or plain text
All papers will be considered for both the oral and poster sessions.
Notification of acceptance will be made on or before 31st of March 2006, together with any comments from reviewers for revision.
Final versions of papers:
Final versions of papers (maximum 10 pages, DOC, RTF or LaTeX files) should be sent for inclusion in the proceedings before 30th of April. Any papers received after that date will not be included in the printed proceedings and will be excluded from the conference programme. Also, only papers for which at least one author has registered for the conference by 30th of April will be accepted for the proceedings. A style sheet for accepted submissions will be available soon on the EAMT 2006 website.
It is anticipated that papers will be made available in electronic form on the EAMT website after the conference. Electronic versions (PDF or postscript) will be produced by the organizers.
Programme Committee:
Viggo Hansen (Chair, Zacco A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bente Maegaard (CST, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark)
Margaret King, (ISSCO, University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Anthony Clarke, (CLS, Switzerland)
Doris Marty-Albisser (CLS, Zürich, Switzerland)
Jan Tore Lønning (University of Oslo, Norway)
Andy Way (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Jeanette Ørsted, (Plougmann & Vingtoft, Denmark)
Wolfgang Täger (EPO, Munich, Germany)
Harold Somers (University of Manchester, United Kingdom)
Gregor Thurmair (Linguatec, Germany) (To be confirmed)
Venue and Registration:
The conference will take place 19-20 June, 2006 at the University of Oslo. Registration fees, hotel accommodation and other facilities will be announced at the latest 31st of January. Please consult the conference web site for further information: http://eamt.emmtee.net/.
Local organizer:
Local organiser is Local organiser is Jan Tore Lønning (j.t.lonning@iln.uio.no), who provides further details.
Important Dates:
Deadline for submissions: 31 January, 2006
Registration: from 15 February, 2006
Acceptance notification: 31 March, 2006
Final copies due: 30 April, 2006
Early registration deadline: 30 April, 2006
Conference date: 19-20 June, 2006

Machine translation (computer-based translation) Publications by John Hutchins

Articles, books and papers about machine translation and computer-based translation tools, the historical development and current use of computers for the translation of natural languages. The collection includes general articles, surveys of contemporary developments, and historical works. At a later date more may be added. Most are in PDF format, but some are HTML.

All publications © W.John Hutchins (except otherwise indicated). References and citations should be made to original sources and not only to the website copies.

General works Brief overviews
Contemporary surveys
Powerpoint presentations

Historical works: general Historical: 1980s and 1990s
Historical: 1960s and 1970s
Historical: pioneers Historical: short papers

Directory of current systems

* Compendium of translation software: commercial machine translation systems and computer-based translation support tools. [Geneva]: European Association for Machine Translation. [PDF files]

General works

* Towards a definition of example-based machine translation. To be presented at the MT Summit X workshop on Example-Based Machine Translation, Phuket, Thailand, 16 September 2005. [PDF, 170KB]
Machine translation today and tomorrow. In Computerlinguistik: was geht, was kommt? Festschrift für Winfried Lenders, hrsg. Gerd Willée, Bernhard Schröder, Hans-Christian Schmitz. Sankt Augustin: Gardez! Verlag, 2002, pp.159-162. [PDF, 81KB]

Towards a new vision for MT. Introductory speech at the 'MT Summit VIII' conference, 18-22 September 2001, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. [Also available on the EAMT website] [PDF, 96KB]
Machine translation and human translation: in competition or in complementation? International Journal of Translation, vol.13, no.1-2, Jan-Dec 2001, pp. 5-20. Special theme issue on machine translation, [editor] Michael S. Blekhman. Also in: Machine translation theory & practice, edited by Michael S. Blekhman. New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 2001. (BP Series in Translation Studies, 8). [PDF, 113KB]

Retrospect and prospect in computer-based translation In Machine Translation Summit VII, 13th-17th September 1999, Kent Ridge Digital Labs, Singapore. Proceedings of MT Summit VII "MT in the great translation era", 30-34. [Tokyo]: Asia-Pacific Association for Machine Translation, 1999. [PDF, 125KB]

The IAMT Certification initiative and defining translation system categories. Paper given at EAMT Workshop, Ljubljana, May 2000. [Description of current work on developing a categorisation of systems for vendors and purchasers.] [PDF] [Available also via the EAMT archives.]

Evaluation of machine translation and translation tools In: Survey of the state of the art in human language technology. Managing editors: Giovanni Battista Varile [and] Antonio Zampolli. Editorial board: Ronald A.Cole (editor in chief), Joseph Mariani, Hans Uszkoreit, Annie Zaenen, Victor Zue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; [and] Pisa: Giardini Editori e Stampatori, 1997 [i.e. 1998], pp. 418-419. (Linguistica Computazionale XII-XIII.) [PDF, 85KB]

Reflections on the history and present state of machine
translation. In: MT Summit V proceedings, Luxembourg, July 10-13, 1995. [pp. 89-96] [PDF, 106KB]

An introduction to machine translation [jointly with Harold L.Somers]. London: Academic Press, 1992. xxi, 362pp. [ISBN: 0-12-362830-x.] All chapters are now available on this website.

Why computers do not translate better. In: Translating and the Computer 13: the theory and the practice of machine translation - a marriage of convenience? Papers presented at a conference jointly sponsored by Aslib, The Association for Information Management; Aslib Technical Translation Group; Institute of Translation and Interpreting, 18-19 November 1991, CBI Conference Centre, London WC1. London: Aslib, 1992. p.3-16. {Reprinted in: Aslib Proceedings 44 (10), October 1992, p.351-359.} [PDF, 151KB]

Prospects in machine translation. In: Machine Translation Summit [Proceedings of conference held September 17-19, 1987, Hakone Prince Hotel, Japan.] Editor-in-chief: Makoto Nagao. Tokyo: Ohmsha Ltd., 1989. pp. 7-12. [PDF, 111KB]

Brief overviews
* Machine translation: general overview. In: The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics. Edited by Ruslan Mitkov (Oxford: University Press, 2003), pp. 501-511.

* Commercial systems: the state of the art. In: Computers and translation: a translator's guide. Edited by Harold Somers (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003), pp. 161-174.

Commercial systems: the state of the art in 1999. [Unpublished earlier version of the paper in Somers' collection, reflecting the situation in mid 1999; PDF, 136KB]

Commercial systems: the state of the art in 2001 [Unpublished earlier version of the papers in Somers' collection, reflecting the situation in mid 2001; PDF, 132KB]

Translation technology and the translator. In: ITI Conference 11. Proceedings [of] International conference, exhibition & AGM, 8-10 May 1997. Compiled by Catherine Greensmith & Marilyn Vandamme. (London: Institute of Translation & Interpreting, 1997), pp. 113-120. [Also: Machine Translation Review, issue no. 7 (April 1998), pp. 7-14] [PDF, 105KB]

Contemporary Surveys

* Current commercial machine translation systems
and computer-based translation tools: system types and their uses. To appear in International Journal of Translation. [PDF, 191KB]

* Machine translation and computer-based translation tools: what's available and how it's used. A new spectrum of translation studies, ed. José Maria Bravo (Valladolid: Univ. Valladolid, 2004), pp.13-48. [PDF, 186KB]

The development and use of machine translation systems
and computer-based translation tools. International Conference on Machine Translation & Computer Language Information Processing, 26-28 June 1999, Beijing, China. Proceedings of the conference, editor: Chen Zhaoxiong, 1-16. [Beijing: Research Center of Computer & Language Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences.] Reprinted in: International Journal of Translation vol.15, no.1, Jan-June 2003, 5-26 [PDF, 165KB] [also HTML]

* Computer-based translation systems and tools. (revised January 2005) [Available on British Computer Society website.]

The state of machine translation in Europe and future prospects. HLT Central, January 2002. [Available on HLT Central website.]

Computer-based translation tools, terminology and
documentation in the organizational workflow: a report from recent EAMT workshops. Proceedings of the International Conference on Professional Communication and Knowledge Transfer, Vienna, 24-26 August 1998, vol.ll: 4th Infoterm Symposium: Terminology work and knowledge transfer ? Best practice in terminology management and terminography. (Vienna: TermNet, 1998), pp. 255-268. [HTML, 29KB]

PowerPoint presentations [temporary]

The Georgetown-IBM experiment demonstrated in
January 1954. Presentation on 30 September at AMTA-2004, Washington DC. [PPT, 952KB] {For full paper see below.}

* Machine translation and computer-based translation aids. Presentation in January 2005 at the University of East Anglia. [PPT, 159KB]

Machine translation: past imperfect, future indefinite. Presentation in November 2003 at the University of Leeds. [PPT, 87KB]

Machine translation and computer-based translation aids. Presentation in November 2003 at the University of East Anglia, Norwich [PPT (175KB), available on request]

Machine translation: current research problems and issues, and future prospects. Presentation in March 2003 at the University of Valladolid, Spain [PPT (131KB) available on request]

Machine translation and computer-based translation aids: systems and usage. Presentation given in December 2002 at Libera Università degli Studi "S.Pio V", Rome, Italy [PPT (178KB) available on request.]

Machine translation and translation aids: systems, problems, uses, prospects. Presentation given in December 2002 at Università di Bologna, SSLMIT, Forlí, Italy. [PPT (265KB) available on request.]

Machine translation in the real world. A presentation surveying current and possible future uses of computer-based translation systems and tools. Given in July 2002, Barcelona, Spain. [PPT file (186KB) available on request.]

Evolution of machine translation: systems and use. Short presentation at MT Summit VIII, Santiago de Compostela, September 2001. [PPT, 35KB]

Historical works: general

* Machine translation: half a century of research and use. Paper for UNED summer school, Avila 2003. To be published. [PDF, 195KB]

Has machine translation improved?. MT Summit IX: proceedings of the Ninth Machine Translation Summit, New Orleans, USA, September 23-27, 2003, 181-188. [East Stroudsburg, PA: AMTA.] [PDF, 191KB]

An expanded version [PDF, 288KB] illustrates further aspects, and a database gives longer examples of MT texts from the past, with comparative output from some current systems.

Machine translation over fifty years. Histoire Epistémologie Langage vol. 23 (1), 2001, 7-31. [PDF, 160KB] [also HTML available on request]

Machine translation: a brief history. In: The concise history of the language sciences: from the Sumerians to the cognitivists. Ed. E.F.K.Koerner and R.E.Asher (Pergamon, 1995), pp. 431-445. [HTML, 84KB]

Machine translation: history and general principles. In: The encyclopedia of languages and linguistics. Editor-in-chief: R.E.Asher. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994. vol. 5, pp. 2322-2332. [Available on request.]

Machine translation: past, present, future. (Ellis Horwood Series in Computers and their Applications.) Chichester, Ellis Horwood, 1986. 382p. ISBN: 0-85312-788-3. {Chinese translation: Ji chifan yi: guo chyu, shan zai, wei lai. [Taipei], Zhi-Wen Publication Company, 1993. ISBN: 957-8759-01-0. 487pp.} All chapters are now available on this website.

The origins of the translator's workstation. Machine Translation vol.13 (4), 1998, 287-307. [PDF, 170KB]

"The whiskey was invisible", or persistent myths of MT. MT News International 11 (June 1995), 17-18. [PDF, 92KB]

History of MT in a nutshell. A two-page sketch, from the beginnings to the present. [Not published.] [HTML, 11KB]

Historical works: 1980s and 1990s

Twenty years of Translating and the Computer. In: Translating and the Computer 20: proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Translating and the Computer, 12-13 November, 1998, London. (London: Aslib, 1998). 16pp. [A historical survey of MT as reflected in the proceedings of the series of annual Aslib conferences, from 1978 to 1998.] [PDF, 169KB]

The state of machine translation in Europe. In: Expanding MT horizons: proceedings of the Second Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, 2-5 October 1996, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, pp. 198-205. [PDF, 103KB]

Research methods and system designs in machine translation:
a ten-year review, 1984-1994. In: Proceedings of the second international conference organised by Cranfield University [and] British Computer Society,... 12-14 November 1994. Cranfield, Bedford: Cranfield University Press, 1998. 16pp. [PDF, 149KB] [also HTML]

A new era in machine translation. Aslib Proceedings 47 (10), October 1995, pp. 211-219 [Paper presented at Translating and the Computer 17, ... 10-11 November 1994, Institution of Civil Engineers, London.] [PDF, 162KB]

Vers une nouvelle époque en traduction automatique. In: Clas, André et Bouillon, Pierrette (eds.) TA-TAO: recherches de pointe et applications immédiates. Troisièmes Journées Scientifiques du réseau thématique "Lexicologie, Terminologie, Traduction" Montréal, 30 septembre, 1er et 2 octobre 1993. Montréal (Québec): AUPELF/UREF, 1994, pp.3-16. [PDF, 133KB]

Latest developments in machine translation technology: beginning a new era in MT research. In: The Fourth Machine Translation Summit: MT Summit IV. Proceedings: International cooperation for global communication, July 20-22, 1993, Kobe, Japan. [Tokyo: AAMT, 1993], pp. 11-34. [PDF, 184KB]

Out of the shadows: a retrospect of machine translation in the eighties. Paper presented at Computer & Translation '89, Tbilisi (Georgia), November-December 1989. In: Terminologie et Traduction no.3, 1990, pp. 275-292. [HTML, 54KB]

Recent developments in machine translation:
a review of the last five years. In: New directions in machine translation: conference proceedings, Budapest 18-19 August 1988. Editors: Dan Maxwell, Klaus Schubert, and Toon Witkam. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1988. pp. 7-62. [Substantial survey of developments since my 1986 book, with full bibliography.] [PDF, 329KB]

Historical works: 1960s and 1970s

* Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. In: Encyclopedia of linguistics, ed. Philipp Strazny. (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005), vol.1, pp.124-126. [PDF, 89KB]

ALPAC: the (in)famous report. MT News International 14, June 1996, pp. 9-12. Reprinted in: Readings in machine translation, ed. Sergei Nirenburg, Harold Somers, and Yorick Wilks (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2003), pp. 131-135. [PDF, 102KB; also HTML, 26KB]

The evolution of machine translation systems . In: Practical experience of machine translation: Proceedings of a conference, London 5-6 November 1981, ed. by Veronica Lawson. Amsterdam, North-Holland Publ.Co., 1982. pp. 21-37. [PDF, 190KB]

Linguistic models in machine translation. UEA Papers in Linguistics 9, January 1979, pp.29-52. [PDF, 197KB]

Machine translation and machine-aided translation. Journal of Documentation 34(2), June 1978, 119-159 (Progress in Documentation). [Reprinted in: Translation: literary, linguistic, and philosophical perspectives. Edited by William Frawley. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984); pp. 93-149] [PDF, 378KB]

Historical works: pioneer decades

* The Georgetown-IBM experiment demonstrated in
January 1954. In: Machine translation: from real users to research. 6th Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, AMTA-2004, Washington DC, USA, September 28 - October 2, 2004. Proceedings, ed. Robert E.Frederking [and] Kathryn B.Taylor. (Berlin: Springer, 2004), 102-114. [PDF, 168KB]

An expanded version will be made available in due course, with information about (and some copies of) contemporary reports. {See also PPT file of the presentation, and the original sentences and translations.}

From first conception to first demonstration: the nascent years of machine translation, 1947-1954. A chronology. Machine Translation vol. 12 (3), 1997, pp. 195-252. [PDF, 326KB]. Also a corrected version, with minor additions (2005) [PDF, 328KB]

Looking back to 1952: the first MT conference. In TMI-97: proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Machine Translation, July 23-25, 1997, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. [Las Cruces: Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University] pp. 19-30. [HTML, 43KB]

First steps in mechanical translation. In: MT Summit VI: past, present, future. Proceedings, 29 October - 1 November 1997, San Diego, California. Edited by Virginia Teller and Beth Sundheim. [Washington, D.C.: Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, 1997] pp. 14-23. [PDF, 142KB]

* Two precursors of machine translation: Artsrouni and Trojanskij. International Journal of Translation 16(1), Jan-June 2004, 11-31. [PDF, 289KB]

Petr Petrovich Troyanskii (1894-1950): a forgotten pioneer of mechanical translation. Machine Translation vol. 15(3), 2000, pp. 187-221. [PDF, 277KB]

(editor) Early years in machine translation: memoirs and biographies of pioneers. (Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 97) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000. xii,400 pp. Illus. [ISBN: 1-58811-013-3] See contents and publishers' flyer [PDF, 53KB.]

The Georgetown-IBM demonstration,7th January 1954. MT News International, no.8, May 1994, pp.15-18 [PDF]

Other papers in linguistics, information retrieval summarization, etc.