Does anyone actually use machine translation? That's a question which has reappeared at regular intervals throughout the more than four decades in which people have tried to program computers to translate from one human language to another. The short answer is "yes," people do--not as much as some might wish, but more than many believe. Success using MT has proven to be an elusive goal for many users; early adapters have not always remained faithful adherents. Recent developments, however, are radically altering this landscape.

All indications are that 1995 is shaping up to be a watershed year for MT. In the two years since Summit IV, the market for machine translation has seen a virtual revolution, and this has greatly affected the ways in which MT is being used. The sea change for the MT market in the last two years is that prices have dropped and the platforms are such the technology is now accessible to almost anyone. MT is now also readily available through several on-line services. These changes have given people more flexibility in approaching the MT option. Because so many more modalities are now available, it can be said that in 1995 the hallmark of MT usage is diversity.

An Overview for 1995

For Summit V, we have endeavored to sketch a rough map of MT usage in Europe and the Americas.² Our overview is based in part on an official survey we conducted in the first half of 1995 with partial funding by the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT) (see Annex 1). In this survey we attempted to gain insight into the current MT experience and to identify trends in MT use. The first IAMT-sanctioned survey of MT users was conducted in 1993, and the results were reported at Summit IV in Kobe (Vasconcellos 1993). The latest survey has helped us to identify a variety of innovative applications, and it has shown us how some of the new products that have appeared are affecting the uses to which MT is being put.

The responses this time were considerably fewer in number and less cohesive than two years ago. In 1993 they clearly pointed to certain trends, and by and large the trends correlated with the characteristics of the MT products being used. Thus, for example, in 1993 the more "mature" systems were responsible for the major share of the work being done. For the most part, the large-scale uses of general-purpose MT systems involved technical manuals and other aspects of localization, and most often the direction was from English into several other languages. The respondents found that the use of MT systems with filters that preserved graphics and format markup was saving them from 30% to 50% over their former production costs. On the other hand, the MT packages then being sold for PCs were mostly being used in casual applications, and often not for business at all. In business, they were being used to meet a variety of small-scale translation needs. In 1995, however, there is a much wider range of uses, and the trends are less consistent. The PC systems are now being used in large- scale production and are becoming important components of the business environment.

In 1993 the number of responses (38) was large enough to risk an estimate of total MT usage in the world--namely, 380 million words, or 1.2 million pages. However, a much larger sample would be needed in order to confirm this figure, which is undoubtedly only a very small share of the world's total volume of translation--perhaps less than 1%.³ Because of the modest response this year, it is less possible than ever to estimate the percentage of translation in the world being supported by machine translation.