Outline of the machine translation project at the University of Washington

This report traces the history of MT research at the University of Washington which, as elsewhere in this country, was sparked by Dr. Warren Weaver's memorandum of July 15th, 1949. After preliminary grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1952 and 1953 for research in German-English MT, Dr. Reifler's research was sponsored by the Rome Air Development Center, Rome, N. Y., of the USAF and supported by several grants for Russian-English MT which at the time of the termination of the project in March of 1960 totaled $235,500.00. The lexicographical, linguistic and engineering research of the project was carried out in consideration of the capabilities of the photoscopic translation system designed by Dr. Gilbert W. King and first developed by International Telemeter Corporation of Los Angeles. It is at present being improved by IBM under Dr. King's supervision. The aim of the first phase of the project was an optimum of lexicography intended to solve as many bilingual linguistic problems as possible by lexicographical means alone. The second phase of the project was concerned with the elaboration of linguistic and engineering procedures aimed at the solution of the remaining bilingual problems. Details concerning the research and its results will be found in LINGUISTIC AND ENGINEERING STUDIES IN AUTOMATIC LANGUAGE TRANSLATION OF SCIENTIFIC RUSSIAN INTO ENGLISH, PHASE I (June, 1958) and PHASE II (March, 1960), University of Washington Press, Seattle.