Georgetown–IBM experiment
In plain wordsA 1954 public demonstration in New York in which an IBM computer translated about sixty Russian sentences into English. It raised hopes for automatic translation that took decades to fulfill.
A joint demonstration by Georgetown University and IBM, held in New York on 7 January 1954, that gave the public its first sight of machine translationmachine translation, n.: Software that renders writing or speech in one language into another language, as online translation services and phone translation apps do.: an IBM 701 rendered more than sixty Russian sentences, drawn mainly from chemistry, politics, law and military affairs, into English. Its entire linguistic equipment was a vocabulary of about 250 words and six rules for choosing word senses and reordering words, and the sentences had been selected to suit it. Newspapers nonetheless reported a breakthrough, and the organizers forecast practical automatic translation within three to five years. The publicity helped release substantial US government funding during the Cold War, until the ALPAC reportALPAC report, prop. n.: A 1966 US government report that concluded machine translation was slower, worse and costlier than human translators. It ended most American funding for the field for many years. of 1966 concluded that the promise had not been kept.
The Georgetown–IBM experiment is the textbook case of a demonstration that outran the technology.
Origin
Led by Léon Dostert of Georgetown University and Cuthbert Hurd of IBM, with the linguist Paul Garvin designing the rules. It followed the first conference on machine translation, organized by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel at MIT in 1952.
Related
- machine translationmachine translation, n.: Software that renders writing or speech in one language into another language, as online translation services and phone translation apps do.
- ALPAC reportALPAC report, prop. n.: A 1966 US government report that concluded machine translation was slower, worse and costlier than human translators. It ended most American funding for the field for many years.
- AI hypeAI hype, n.: Exaggerated claims about what AI can do or will soon do, made to attract money, attention or customers, which can mislead the public and policymakers.
- AI winterAI winter, n.: A slump in which disappointment over AI's unmet promises leads governments and companies to pull back money and attention. Historians count two big ones: one in the 1970s and one starting in the late 1980s.
- natural language processingnatural language processing, n.: The field that teaches computers to handle human language — to read, interpret, translate, summarize and produce text and speech. It is one of the oldest and largest areas of artificial intelligence.
Sources
- Hutchins, W. J. (2004). The Georgetown–IBM Experiment Demonstrated in January 1954. In Machine Translation: From Real Users to Research (AMTA 2004), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3265. Berlin: Springer.
Mentioned in
ALPAC reportALPAC report, prop. n.: A 1966 US government report that concluded machine translation was slower, worse and costlier than human translators. It ended most American funding for the field for many years.