Questionnaire 2: Machine Translation (MT)

Now, we have a clear idea of what Natural Language Processing (NLP) is; besides, we have already mentioned the most common tasks that have to do with NLP. In this post, what I would like to do is to start explaining briefly some of those topics for you to have a better understanding of them.

Trans·la·tion

Machine Translation (MT):

Machine Translation (MT) is a sub-field of Computational Linguistics whose main purpose is to develop computer software in order to translate automatically text or speech from one natural language to another one. At a first approach, MT substitutes words in one natural language for words in the target language. However, with the use of several corpus techniques we can obtain more complex translations.

Questionnaire 2: Classic HLT topics

Those of you who are hooked on Human Language Technologies (HLT) will already  know that along the year researchers publish books, give lectures and conferences… about different topics that have to do with this area of Computational Linguistics that we are currently studying.

"Oh, mother! Your databases are *so* 20th century!" "I just don't understand you unstructured kids!"

For that reason I have decided to bring here some of the most classic or important topics discussed in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Here come the examples:

Questionnaire 1: Research centres for Human Language Technologies (II)

We continue showing you examples of research centres for Human Language Technologies (HLT); today we travel to the Netherlands in order to discover The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam (Universiteit van Amsterdam).

University of Amsterdam logo

The ILLC , with researchers from the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Humanities, started off in 1986 as the Institute for Logic, Language and Information; but it was not until 1991 that it was officially established as a University Research Institute. Since that year, several faculties and groups such as The Applied Logic Lab have joined the ILLC.

Questionnaire 1: Research centres for Human Language Technologies (I)

If you have been following my blog lately, you will already know what Human Language Technologies (HLT) are, as well as some of the most relevant figures that are currently investigating this field. In this post what I would like to do is to start showing you some examples of the best research centres that we have today.

Main entrance to the DFKI

The first centre that we are going to mention due to its great importance is the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH). The DFKI, Germany’s leading research centre in the area of innovative software technology, has facilities in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, Bremen, and a project office in Berlin. It has been recognized as a remarkable “centre of excellence” since its foundation as a nonprofit organization in 1988 by several renowned German IT companies and two research facilities. Nowadays, with an overall annual budget of more than € 25 million, the DFKI works hard in its “Living Labs” in order to launch innovative and technological solutions and products for its customers.

Questionnaire 1: Yorick Wilks (Researchers) (II)

In this article I am going to keep on presenting important researchers and scholars that have successfully contributed to the development of the areas that we have been studying lately. Today I am going to introduce you to Yorick Wilks, who is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield and whose research interests include: artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, theoretical linguistics, machine translation, dialogue management and understanding systems and named entity recognition, among other topics.

Professor Yorick Wilks

Yorick Wilks was born in the United Kingdom in 1939 and was educated at Torquay Boys’ Grammar School (Devon, England), before attending Pembroke College, at the widely known University of Cambridge (Cambridgeshire, England), where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1968 under Professor R. B. Braithwaite for his thesis Argument and Proof.

Questionnaire 1: Hans Uszkoreit (Researchers) (I)

This term we are studying Human Language Technologies (HLT) and for that reason I have published in the previous posts some definitions that I found useful to gain a good insight into this topic. However, I think it is the time to meet some of the most important researchers, scholars and professors on this field.

Hans Uszkoreit's portrait

The first researcher that I am going to present is Hans Uszkoreit, who is Professor of Computational Linguisitcs at the Department of Computational Linguistics and Phonetics of Saarland University at Saarbrücken (Germany). At the same time he serves as Scientific Director at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), where he heads the Language Technology Lab.

Questionnaire 1: What is Human Language Technology? (Expert opinions) (II)

We continue quoting definitions of what Human Language Technology (HLT) is, expressed by authorised scholars and institutions in order to gain a real insight into this interesting topic. In this second post, as we have previously published Hans Uszkoreit’s thesis, we are going to make a reference to an HLT definition by a renowned university.

The University of Sheffield (Portobello centre)

The definition that we are going to present today was given by the Natural Language Processing Group at the University of Sheffield (South Yorkshire, England), in whose head we find Yorick Wiks, another important and distinguished researcher in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence. They described Natural Language Processing as follows:

Questionnaire 1: What is Human Language Technology? (Expert opinions) (I)

Now that we have a general idea of what Human Language Technology (HLT) is, we are going to quote some definitions on this very same topic that relevant scholars and institutions have previously published in order to clarify our concepts

Human-machine interaction

The first definition that we are going to present was given by one of the most important researchers in the field of computational linguistics: Hans Uszkoreit, professor at the Saarland University and head of the Language Technology Lab at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). In an article entitled “Language Technology: a first overview” Mr. Uszkoreit explained what Human Language Technology is in the following terms:

Questionnaire 1: What is Human Language Technology? (General overview)

When we talk about Human Language Technology (also known as HLT) we are referring to a field of computer science in which through the help of some computational devices or software programs we are allowed to communicate with a machine in order to obtain a piece of required information.

Human Language Technology

The main aim of Language Technology is to develop software applications capable of understanding human natural languages (that differ from computer languages) in order to solve the communication problems that interaction between people and machines have generated in the past. In some way, we are now teaching machines how to communicate with us, how to talk with us… making them more “human”.