Machine language translations

[Lukas Vlcek]

Hello,

does anybody of you know about or have any experience with machine
language translations? I am interested in ways how to turn text in one
language (say english) into other popular languages (german, french,
spanish, chinese ...). Not only to allow searching in other languages
but also to produce a text which is readable to humans. I know the
most obvious answer would be that it is hardly possible without huge
infrastructure and investments coparable to google translate service
but anyway, I would like to know if there are any resources, open
source projects, etc ...

Regards,
Lukas

[Alexandre Rafalovitch]

Plenty of resources, but you have to pick your source and target
language first (unless you want true statistical translation and have
a true Google-size corpus to train it on).

Once you know your languages, then you can talk about resources.
Machine Translation is one of the more complex part of NLP/CL, so you
need to define your interest quite narrowly. And also whether you are
looking for practical results ('good enough for use') or research
progress with validation scores, etc.

Regards,
Alex.

Personal blog: http://blog.outerthoughts.com/
Research group: http://www.clt.mq.edu.au/Research/
- I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity (Tom Stoppard)

[Lukas Vlcek]

Hello,

I am looking for more practical approach (not interested in research
now). Imagine that I have a collection of short texts focused on
specific topic like health care or sport. Source: english, target:
spanish.

Regards,
Lukas

[Alexandre Rafalovitch]

Google Translate API? But then you might be emailing the wrong group.

Regards,
Alex.