5 Controlled language and domain-specific systems

In these circumstances, however, it has often been found feasible to introduce a greater degree of control. One of the earliest and best known examples is the application of the Systran system by the Xerox Corporation. At Xerox technical authors are obliged to compose documents in what is called Multinational Customized English, where not only the use of specific terms is laid down but also the construction of sentences.

The advantages of this approach are: the avoidance of ambiguities in the input which the MT system cannot deal with adequately, the consequential better quality output, the faster production of technical documents simultaneously in a number of different languages, and (not least) the production of more easily comprehensible English documents. These advantages have been recognised by other multinational companies, and the use of ‘controlled languages’ is increasing: for example, the Caterpillar Corporation has devised its own form of English to facilitate translation in a knowledge-based MT system being developed for it at the Carnegie-Mellon University. There are some companies offering to build ‘controlled’ language MT systems for specific clients. The oldest established – and the pioneer in this approach – is the Smart Corporation, New York. Systems have been developed by Smart for a number of major clients: Citicorp, Chase, Ford, General Electric, etc. Each incorporates a system for ‘normalising’ English documents. This system component is considered so crucial to success that the actual translation process is regarded as virtually a ‘by-product’. There are Smart systems translating into French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. The largest Smart installation, perhaps, is the system designed for the Canadian Ministry of Employment, where it has been used for many years to translate information about job advertisements and similar documentation.

In Europe, the Cap Volmac company in the Netherlands and the LANT company in Belgium offer similar services, building for various clients specialised translation systems utilising their own software for controlled languages. Cap Volmac Lingware Services is a Dutch subsidiary of the Cap Gemini Sogeti Group. Over the years this software company has constructed controlled-language systems for textile and insurance companies, mainly from Dutch to English. However, possibly the best known success story for custom-built MT is the PaTrans system developed for LingTech A/S to translate English patents into Danish. The system is based on methods and experience gained from the Eurotra project of the European Commission.

These last examples of systems illustrate that a growing number of companies and organisations are developing their own MT facilities, as opposed to purchasing commercial systems. This has been a feature from early days. The successful Météo system in Canada for translating weather forecasts from English into French (and later from French into English) was effectively a customer-specific system – in this case the Canadian Environment service. It may be noted that a variant of the Météo software was successfully operated during the Olympic games in Atlanta. Météo is an example of a ‘sublanguage’ system, i.e. designed for to deal with the particular language of meteorology.

Another example of a custom-built system is TITUS, a highly constrained ‘sublanguage’ system for translating abstracts of documents of the textile industry from and into English, French, German, and Spanish, in regular use since 1970. Better known are the two customer-specific systems for translating between English and Spanish built at the Pan American Health Organization in Washington – designed and developed by workers in the organisation itself. These highly successful systems (now also available to users outside PAHO) are general-purpose systems, not constrained in vocabulary or text type, although obviously the dictionaries are strongest in the health-related social science fields.

In the 1990s there have been a number of other examples. In Finland, the Kielikone system was developed originally as a workstation for Nokia Telecommunications. Subsequently, versions were installed at other Finnish companies and the system is now being marketed more widely. A similar story applies to GSI-Erli. This large language engineering company developed an integrated in-house translation system combining a MT engine and various translation aids and tools on a common platform AlethTrad. Recently it has been making the system available in customised versions for outside clients.

On a smaller scale, but equally successful, has been the system developed by the translation service of a small British company Hook and Hatton. In this case, the need was for translation of chemical texts from Dutch into English. The designer began by simple pattern matching of phrases, and gradually built in more syntactic analysis as and when results were justifiable and cost-effective.

Based on experience over many years in developing knowledge-based MT and experimenting with speech translation and corpus-based methods, members of the group at Carnegie-Mellon University have developed an architecture for the rapid production of usable MT systems for specific clients in some less common languages, such as SerboCroat and Haitian Creole (Frederking et al. 1997). There is no pretence of high quality, merely ‘usefulness’ for languages otherwise inaccessible.

Another example of custom-built MT in a specialised area is the program developed for TCC Communications at the Simon Fraser University for translating closed captions on television programs. Not only are there time constraints – translation must be in real-time – but also there are the challenges of colloquialisms, dialogue, robustness, and paucity of context indicators. The system, at present running live for English into Spanish, demanded techniques otherwise found mainly in Internet applications.

In Japan, there are further examples of custom-built systems. The Japan Information Centre of Science and Technology translates abstracts of Japanese scientific and technical articles into English. In the late 1980s it assumed responsibility of the Mu Japanese-English MT system developed at the University of Kyoto. From this, it now has one of the largest MT operations in Japan. Other custom-built systems of significance in Japan are the SHALT system developed by IBM Japan for its own translation needs, the ARGO system developed by CSK in Tokyo for translating Japanese stock market reports into English, and the NHK system for translating English news articles into Japanese.