Book Reviews

It is organized around projects as "a history and assessment of efforts to mechanise processes of translating" (p.18). It is complete, discussing basically every project in the world since machine translation's first glimmerings 40 years ago Projects are grouped by time frame, nation, or approach. The organization is, of course, somewhat arbitrary, but it is supplemented by cross-references and summary tables of projects and systems. Hutchins not only presents the theories, algorithms, and designs but also the history, goals, assumptions, and constraints of each project. There are many sample outputs and fair evaluations of the contributions and shortcomings of each approach.