ACL4 Machine Translation Exam 1996
Andy Way
Dublin City University
Attempt five questions.
Q 1.
Discuss the following statement in the light of your practical
experiences of using MT systems:
``... it is the translator's skill, not the mode of work, that
determines the quality of the final translation
product'', (Vasconcellos & Bostad, 1992:68).
Q 2.
What are the characteristics of on-line systems as opposed to
batch systems? Comment on their major advantages and
disadvantages in the light of your own experiences of such systems.
Q 3.
Discuss the requirements on grammar formalisms and parsing
algorithms used for MT systems.
Q 4.
How can different types of knowledge help us resolve cases of
structural ambiguity? Why do we distinguish
between real and accidental structural ambiguity?
Q 5.
How attainable do you consider a fully language-neutral
interlingua to be? Substantiate your opinions with insights from
translational ambiguities.
Q 6.
Most generation systems include the notions of predetermined
choice and structure preservation. What are the advantages and
disadvantages of this approach?
Q 7.
Compare and contrast the issues involved in the construction
of traditional paper dictionaries with those of lexica suitable for
NLP in general, and MT in particular.
Q 8.
What additional burdens, if any, does a Speech to Speech
Translation System place on the Computational Linguist as opposed to a
pure MT system?
Andy Way, 10th March 2000.