Distributed Language Translation ( eo, Distribuita Lingvo-Tradukado, DLT) was a project to develop an

interlingual machine translation Interlingual machine translation is one of the classic approaches to machine translation. In this approach, the source language, i.e. the text to be translated is transformed into an interlingua, i.e., an abstract language-independent representa ...

system for twelve European languages. It ran between 1985 and 1990. :The distinctive feature of DLT was the use of version of

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

as an

intermediate language An intermediate representation (IR) is the data structure or code used internally by a compiler or virtual machine to represent source code. An IR is designed to be conducive to further processing, such as optimization and translation. A "good ...

(IL) and the idea that translation could be divided into two stages: from L1 into IL and then from IL into L2. The intermediate translation could be transmitted over a network to any number of workstations which would take care of the translation from IL into the desired language. Since the IL format would have been disambiguated at the source, it could itself serve as a source for further translation without human intervention. — Job M. van Zuijlen (one of the DLT researchers) DLT was undertaken by the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

software house BSO (now part of

Atos Origin Atos is a European multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company headquartered in Bezons, France and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communications, cloud, big data and ...

) in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, pro ...

in cooperation with the now defunct Dutch airplane manufacturer

Fokker Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names. It was founded in 1912 in Berlin, Germany, and became famous for its fighter aircraft in World War I. In 1919 ...

and the

Universal Esperanto Association The Universal Esperanto Association ( eo, Universala Esperanto-Asocio, UEA), also known as the World Esperanto Association, is the largest international organization of Esperanto speakers, with 5501 individual members in 121 countries and 9215 th ...

. The project's results were far from the expected. From a modern view, the DLT concept was erroneous in itself since it was unable to distinguish the different meanings of the same word in different contexts. Modern statistic-based and context-based translation programs are able to produce a better translation.

External links

Examples of DLT

References

Translation Machine translation Esperanto organizations Controlled natural languages 1985 establishments in the Netherlands Projects established in 1985 1985 software 1990 disestablishments in the Netherlands Products and services discontinued in 1990 {{machine-translation-stub

See also

External links

References