TechGist05

When we consider the history of machine translation, the science by which computers automatically translate from one human language to another, we see that much of the science starts with Russian. One of the earliest mentions of automated translation involves Russian Peter Troyanskii who submitted a proposal that included both the bilingual dictionary and a method for dealing with grammatical roles between languages, based on the grammatical system of Esperanto , even before computers were available. The first set of proposals for computer-based machine translation was presented in 1949 by Warren Weaver , a researcher at the Rockefeller Foundation in his now famous " Translation memorandum ". In the famous memorandum referenced here, he said: “it is very tempting to say that a book written in Russian is simply a book written in English which was coded into the Russian code.” These proposals were based on information theory , successes in code-breaking during the Second Wo...

This is a modified and updated post that was originally published in CMS Wire on June 1st. We live in an era where there is more information available to a digitally savvy human than has ever been possible in the history of mankind as we know it. The volume growth implications are so significant and substantial that it is worth considering some contextual facts to get a proper understanding of this fact. The Encyclopedia Britannica announced in 2012 that after 244 years, dozens of editions, and more than 7M sets sold, no new editions would be printed. The 32 volumes of the 2010 installment, it turns out, were the last edition of this great publication. The primary cause for this was the increasing use and relevance of the Wikipedia (and other digital alternatives) which would cover 2,670+ Encyclopedia Britannica sized volumes if it were to be actually printed. While some may argue that the Wikipedia is less reliable, this contrast is quite astonishing and clearly, there is more inform...