Computers in Translation: A Practical Appraisal

Researchers have been attempting to develop systems that would emulate the human translation process for some forty years. What is it about human language that makes this such a daunting challenge? While other software packages have achieved rapid and lasting success, machine translation has failed to penetrate the worldwide market to any appreciable extent. Does this merely reflect a reluctance to adopt it, or does it signal a more fundamental and intractable problem? Computers in Translat...