Multilingual authoring through an artificial language

Multilingual Authoring through an Artificial Language Marcos Franco Sabarís, Jose Luis Rojas Alonso, C. Dafonte, B. Arcay University of A Coruña C/ Zaragoza 13, 5C 36203 Vigo Spain mfs@mundo-r.com Abstract Nowadays, there is a growing need for dissemination of documents in several languages. Machine translation is usually regarded as a possible solution for this, but so far it cannot provide acceptable translations of unedited texts. Several methods which involve human participation in computerized processes of translation have been proposed, but none has given really satisfactory results (except in some restricted contexts). In the UTL (Universal Translation Language) project, which we present here, we propose a new approach to multilingualization, based on the usage of an artificial unambiguous human language in which the human translator writes the source text, and then gives it to the machine to translate into other languages. The nature of this constructed language, which is optimized for this role, ensures the high quality of the results rendered by the computer. Keywords Multilingual, authoring, human-assisted, artificial language Introduction Since the days when the computer was invented (and even before), it has been a dream shared by many people that one day machines could perform the task of human translators, that is, to convert one text from one language into another. However, machines lack (and will probably lack for a long time) the intelligence necessary to carry out efficiently such an assignment. Nevertheless, it seems to be perfectly in accordance with the state of current technology in this field to expect the machine to translate one text to another (or several other) language(s) with the assistance of a human operator. This possibility has been tried for example under the form of dialogue-based systems for monolingual authors in the past (Boitet and Blanchon 1993), whether by helping the computer in the conversion to the target language (in direct systems), or in the conversion to the intermediate language (in interlingual systems). Pre-edition, with the introduction of a controlled language, has been another method employed to make high quality machine translation possible under some circumstances (Pym 1990). In this paper, we want to present a new approach to multilingual authoring to which we have given birth in the confluence of two seemingly unrelated disciplines: computer-aided translation and interlinguistics or constructed auxiliary languages. This new approach takes form in the UTL (Universal Translation Language) project. UTL: a new method of multilingualization Born as a consequence of a growing need in today's world, the aim of the UTL project is to provide a tool to convert a specific text written in a given natural language into an indefinite number of other languages, with the help of a computer, in a process of human assisted machine translation. The role of the human translator involved in this process will be confined to provide the computer with a translation of the original text into a special artificial language (the UTL language) that the computer can "understand" and translate better than the original text (written in a natural …

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