Contemplating automatic MT evaluation

Abstract

Researchers, developers, translators and information consumers all share the problem that there is no accepted standard for machine translation. The problem is much further confounded by the fact that MT evaluations properly done require a considerable commitment of time and resources, an anachronism in this day of cross-lingual information processing when new MT systems may developed in weeks instead of years. This paper surveys the needs addressed by several of the classic "types" of MT, and speculates on ways that each of these types might be automated to create relevant, near-instantaneous evaluation of approaches and systems.