Computerized russian translation at ORNL

Since 1964, as an adjunct to its automated technical information processing services to ERDA and other federal agencies, a generalized language translation system has been used by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to translate Russian scientific text to English. The translation system, first implemented at Georgetown University around 1960, has been rewritten and improved through the years as computer models changed. Although the translations lack high literary quality, the system, by means of its context sensitive dictionary, nevertheless provides inexpensive, fast and highly useful translations of scientific literature. The method used involves a linguistically‐oriented programming language called Simulated Linguistic Computer (SLC), with which a language‐specific dictionary can be written for use by the translation system. The dictionary entry for any word can be augmented by procedures which permit its meaning to be modified by its context; more general linguistic procedures operate on the sentence as a whole. In an evaluation of user reaction, over ninety percent of the respondents rated the machine translation (MT) service “good” or “acceptable” on translations of their subject specialty. Development, implementation, and documentation of the system are continuing, as we meet increasing requests for service and attempt new applications of the MT system.