Sheila
There are lots of translation programs and services, but none are
infallable - just try translating into a different language and back
again (ie English-to-French-to-English) and note the differences!
Machine translation works best through the use of a controlled language
set (for example, AECMA Simplified English) which introduces the use of
a restricted vocabulary set, with single defined meanings for each word
together with controlled grammar usage. This may be the best option, but
does introduce an overhead in producing the source documents (limited
scope for expression, longer time to produce, etc.). There are also on-
line translation facilities provided for HTML web pages (for example,
see: http://doc.altavista.com/help/search/babel_tool.shtml) but, again,
their accuracy is limited. The only 'foolproof' translation is (so far)
through human error correction of the final document, or using a
controlled language for writing the document before translation with a
MT package that is known to work with the limited language set used.
Hope this is of some help
Regards
Andy Worall
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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For MT-List info, see http://www.eamt.org/mt-list.html
