An Open-Source Research Toolbox

Even the simplest translation project promises some research or verification of a source term. Often the context is obvious, but the clues to a sufficient translation may have to be unearthed by well-targeted internet searches. I have been measuring the utility of an open-source software toolkit for the task of preempting translator questions and designing internet search queries to answer these questions. With Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK; http://www.nltk.org/) I have available a vast set of language analysis tools available and am working with NLTK to test its ability to identify the rare text, i.e. the text I, as a translator, may not initially understand. Then using keywords 'learned' from the subject matter my program will then search out its meaning.

Many skeptics and proponents of a machine translated world agree that automatic translation is going to blur the line between human and machine translation on a wider scale than ever before, but it is not agreed as to how the effects of it will be felt. The need for humans to initiate and perform research will remain vitally important, and I am excited to have the opportunity and skills to develop an effective research tool than allows translators to perform at their best. For any questions as to the design and approach toward this machine research project, please leave a message.