The Eurotra linguistic specifications: An overview

In this article, we outline the contents of the linguistic specifications of the Eurotra machine translation system. We start in sections 1 and 2 from some of the requirements placed by multilingual MT on the overall design of the linguistic components. We then move on to a characterization of the Eurotra interface structure (section 3), the nature of transfer (section 4), and trends towards more interlingual representations within the project (section 5). Thereafter, we concentrate on the contents of the various levels beside the interface structure (section 6) before giving a brief survey of word structure (section 7) and outlining some areas for further research (section 8)The authors of this article are indebted to many other members of the project too numerous to be mentioned here. They wish to record a special intellectual debt to previous members of the Eurotra Linguistics Specification team and, in particular, Doug Arnold, Louis des Tombe and Lieven Jaspaert who did so much to establish sound theoretical bases for multilingual MT (see inter alia Arnold, Jaspaert and des Tombe 1985; Arnold 1986; Arnold and des Tombe 1987). For an extensive version of the overview presented here, see Allegranza et al. 1991. For another recent presentation of Eurotra, see Raw, Vandecapelle and Van Eynde 1988..