MT and the Future Eduard Hovy Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California

 “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” –Thomas Watson, IBM chair, 1943  “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” –Ken Olson, founder of Digital Corp., 1977  “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” –William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), 1899  “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” –Albert Einstein, 1932

My predictions  MT will be included in every web search engine and in every er.  MT will be available for almost all language pairs.  MT quality will remain more or less where it is now.

Facts and trends  The need for translation is growing  More text, in all languages, is available online  More MT resources (dictionaries, NLP engines, parallel corpora) are available online  The internet connects people and resources in unprecedented ways

The next 5 years—research  The MT quality barrier will remain  Statistical techniques will make new MT engines, for new languages, much faster to build. –Result: MT for almost all language pairs  Statistical techniques will finally transition into the commercial world  New automated evaluation metrics will be developed

The next 5 years—commerce  MT will be included in every web search engine and in every er.  After L&H, the other MT companies’ business will pick up, but there’s no reason for complacency  The internet provides a giant EBMT resource. Companies will exploit this to: –create their own, growing, parallel corpora using translators –locate appropriate translations dynamically, index them (like web search companies), and provide dynamic stitch-together MT on demand

Unlocking the future… …courtesy of Magi Inc.