Duisburger Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft
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This paper describes the effort of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS), the central research institution for the German language, connected with Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Use of ICT in a language research institute is twofold. On the one hand, ICT provides basic services for researches to accomplish their daily work. On the other hand, several national and international institutions have a strong interest in ICT. Therefore, ICT can also be seen as an amplifier for language research. The first part of this paper reports on the activates of the IDS in internal and external ICT-related projects and initiatives. The second part describes a general strategy towards an ICT strategy that could be useful both for the IDS and other national language institutes. We think such a general strategy is necessary to create a strong foundation not only for the ICT-related projects, but as a basis for a modem research institute.
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Communication across all language barriers has long been a goal of humankind. In recent years, new technologies have enabled this at least partially. New approaches and different methods in the field of Machine Translation (MT) are continuously being improved, modified, and combined, as well. Significant progress has already been achieved in this area; many automatic translation tools, such as Google Translate and Babelfish, can translate not only short texts, but also complete web pages in real time. In recent years, new advances are being made in the mobile area; Googles Translate app for Android and iOS, for example, can recognize and translate words within photographs taken by the mobile device (to translate a restaurant menu, for instance). Despite this progress, a “perfect” machine translation system seems to be an impossibility because a machine translation system, however advanced, will always have some limitations. Human languages contain many irregularities and exceptions, and consequently go through a constant process of change, which is difficult to measure or to be processed automatically. This paper gives a short introduction of the state of the art of MT. It examines the following aspects: types of MT, the most conventional and widely developed approaches, and also the advantages and disadvantages of these different paradigms.