Software learns to translate by reading up

Translation software that develops an understanding of languages by scanning through thousands of previously translated documents has been released by US researchers. Most existing translation software uses hand-coded rules for transposing words and phrases. But the new software, developed by Kevin Knight and Daniel Marcu at the Information Sciences Institute, part of the University of Southern California, US, takes a statistical approach, building probabilistic rules about words, phrases and syntactic structures. The pair founded a company called Language Weaver in Los Angeles, US, to sell the software as an automated translation tool. They already offer technology that can translate to or from English with four languages – Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish.