Computational linguistics is the study and use of computer programmes which analyse language in automatic translation or properties of texts.
The first automatic calculation machine was designed by
Babbage in 1822. However, the first programmable computer was invented just
after World War II. After this, computer scientists in America began to develop
applications to translate documents. Particularly, to translate research papers
regarding the Apollo-Soyuz space project from Russian to English.
Even though computers use arithmetic calculations in their
algorithms, machine translations were unable to produce accurate translations. It
was discovered that in order to translate languages using computers they had to
factor in the morphology, syntax, lexicon, semantics and pragmatics of both
languages. This was a very large ask and an accurate translation software has
still not been created.
Currently, the most
advanced computers are able to translate 10,000 words per hour. Although,
afterwards translations need further editing to make them accurate and coherent,
the computational method is much faster than translators working ‘by hand’.
However, it would be naïve to say that translation is the
only way computers can help linguists. For example, computers allow linguists
to gather large amounts of discourse recordings and analyses them
automatically. This technique can be used in theoretical computational
linguistics to form hypotheses and predictions about language and behaviour.
Scientists are always trying to improve current translation
and analysis programmes but it is unlikely that machines will completely
replace human translators or linguists in the near future despite their
efforts.
More information is available at:
Page 360-361 in 'The Encyclopaedia of Language' by David Crystal
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