[MT-List] Eurotra

[John Hutchins]

Dear Heather,

>I was just wondering if anybody could tell me what
>happened to Eurotra?

As well as the non-technical articles mentioned by Colin
Brace, you will find substantial information about Eurotra
of a  more technical nature (with numerous
references) in the book I wrote with Harold Somers:
"An introduction to machine translation" (Academic Press, 1992)
pages 239-258, The book is available in most UK academic 
libraries. The Eurotra project ended very soon afterwards.

>Was it just a question of withdrawn funding? Or were
>there serious problems with the program that couldn't
>be overcome?
        Both are true, but the picture is complex. The chapter
in the book above indicates what the technical problems were.
The last funded phase of the project ended in 1992. The final
review took place in 1993; and the final report from the EC, which 
summed up the project, appeared in 1994 ("Final evaluation of the 
results of Eurotra"  COM (94) 69). From the EC viewpoint the
research of Eurotra was continued in the subsequent Language
Engineering projects. 

>Does it still live on in any form?
        There have been a number of Eurotra-inspired
MT systems, e.g.:
        PaTrans (Denmark) for translating patents
        CAT2 (Saarbruecken, etc.) a research system

I can send references about these to you if you are interested.

John Hutchins
5 Dec
=====================================================
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http//ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/WJHutchins

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