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puter could then tell students seeking to learn French (or other languages) what is stylistically Tong with the sentences they have written. The goal is to automate computer translation to the point where it will read fairly well in the second language. It may still be necessary for an editor to polish the style of the writing, but such a person would not have to be .an expert in the first
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The day is approaching when commuters will be able to “think”and translate both written and oral French ind English like the human mind. While it’s not yet possible to type a etter in English and have a computer automatically translate it into French, developments are being made in this, uea. As well, there’s ongoing *esea.rch into developing a computer hat can understand spoken English md translate it into spoken French. Machine translation has fascinated :omputer scientists, including a num3e~ of bnadians, for decades. At one time Canada was a world eader, with a system for translating Neather reports between English and Yrench. TAUM-METEO, as the sysem was called, was developed by researchers at the University of Monreal and was highly regarded. But the sovemment withdrew funding and Canada lost its dominance. Prof. Chrysanne JXMarco of the Jniversity of Waterloo’s computer thence department and her graduate ;tudents are interested in programrring a computer tci deal with much nore complex things than translating weather forecasts. They envision that the computer wilI some day help to translate tveryday things includhg newspper reports, speeches, government x business documents. This would *present a computer sophistication xyord anything achieved to date, DiMarc says. She is among a group of UW comFter scient& interested in artificial ntelligence and is concentrating her march on “computational linguisits.” With Prof.Robin Cohen, the pup’s -or, they2kre seeking to .dentify language style rules and then to formalize them so they can be dealt with by a computer. Dilbhrco is keenly interested in using the computer in secondlanguage teachingStudents could compose a sentence in the language being taught, then ask the computer to analyze it and correct any errors. Some ,of her earlier research is already wg used for this purpose.
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between the two even when fairly sophis&ted text is involved. She wants the computer tb be able to t&e into account subtle style differences having to do with how words are used within a language. There are many syntactical differenc+s as well as differences in semantic structures - the very- meaning of words -: between English and languages,
phrass. “Now we are building intelligent systems that encompass an understanding of style and we can use these to analyse DiMarco says. There’s renewed interest in rnachin~ translation because so much information is _being exchanged
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ing unique and since we couldn’t compete witi huge, multinational projects we chose style . . . one of the areas the cornput* has until now dealt with very poorly.” Their interest has led to the development of new .computer software based on a deeper understanding of both English and French elements of style. DiMarco has tested the system by analysing sentences that were translated into English from the French newspaper L,e Monde and published in the Guardian Weekly. Thisshowed the system can distinguish stylistic e
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Tk~gh many people have been using WA’ISTAR for years, the idea alone off the laser, still escapes them. Through the years the printing changed and improved greatly. To print from the laser simply print WordPerfect, exit, then type use the lasw cdmmand. The print out will Note :
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teaching students in an a&e learning environment,” Wright said. But to look at the current state we ke in now as a technical engineering problem would be to commit our old mistakes. David QT agrw as well. Orr is an educator at Oberlin Q#ege who was invit& twspeak Cl%@!+ame day as
of printing, let facilities @ve nc~~~~ally from be in E2- 2367
Mah, looking into the structuring of a machine translation system (how to _ integrate style into the translation process and perform the actual map ping from French to English style); and Marzena Makuta, studying a higher level of rhetorical goal-driven machine translation. Mark Pyan, with whom DiMarc was associated at the University of Toronto before coming to UW, worked on the analysis of semantic style. llihdarco says her research has been influenced by Fduard Hovy, US pioneer in this afea. She describes his field as “language generation” using the computer to generate style in natural language. She got into translation studies as a grad&&e student of Hitst and feeis fortunate to be at UW where there is a Centre for Professional Writing. DiMarco hopes that the Centre can collaborate on research into stylktics and rhetoric.
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with the BAs and PhDs. ‘The only people that could live sustainably are people that can’t read,” Orr pointed out, referring to the Amish community near where he lives in the US. Myth: bh?m.
Pugwash Conference report appears on Page 9
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geography people.
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He says much of our current resources problem is the failure of economists to understand ecology. Although ecological economics is an attempt to formaIize interdisciplinary studies across the boundary between the two subjects, we are nowhere near it, Myth: Everyone with gfd tiuns can wrk together. Orrsta~thatwefirstneedasetof values and standards, everything is relative.
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is a solvable proMyth: Education success and mobi&.
No, says Urr, it is part of human ,natu.re. We cannot comprehend everything in nature or manage the earth, but only ourselves. In the 1930s when chlorofluorocarbons were discovered, nobody suspected the problems that they might cause to the atmosphere. Thus by 1975 when the ozone hole was made public, the state of knowledge in science and about CFCs had grown’ but so had ignorance about this problem and many others.
is abouC9qw~4rd
We have actually lost the goal of education, Orr says. It is not to make more successful pesple, but it should be turning out healers, dreamers and visionaries.
world.
For Orr, teaching must encompass a number of -things. He lists the following: -environmental education -use subject matter only as a tool -responsibility must use knowledge -the way things occur is just as important as how
Not if we don’t understand what our actions will do to the biosphere. Ecological experiments known as manipulatitin experiments, in which some aspect of the natural world is disturbed either by mass killing or damage of habitat, is well funded. But impact science, or studying the longterm effects of human activity, is underfunded. An insidious trend Orr says for example is a pesticide manufacturer’ like Monsanto buying up biology departments in the form of research grants. Monsanto is also the company that marketed the use of PCBs in North America.
Knowledge is not complete until we understand the effects on the surrounding community. For WATGREEN to be successful, it must involve ail students and faculty. We must see the campus as a biosphere. We must study local economic development and how to build economies not dependent on muItinational corporations. As OIT realizes, the scale of industrial civilization is al1 wrong. The goal of education he says, should be ecological literacy. Every student must not leave university without knowing what ecology is.
Myth:
Before you may print anything off the laser printer, you must get a laser account. This wiil cost $10 and can be picked up at the Cashiers Office on the lower level in Needles Hall.
Commands:
UW will be renowned for its Yes, communism failed, but so did environmental research iq the capitalism. The latter produced too twenty-first century as it was for commuch and shared too little. In the pre puters during the twentieth century, cess we have bankrupted ourselves Doug Wright announced Iasf fall at ’ morally, according to Orr. the opening address of Not Another Green Week. The UW president was referring to the university’s new environmental awareness initiative, the UW Greening of the or WATGREEN. The fact is’ it isn’t. The study of One of the goals of the initiative is birds and classification of plants and to uncover and develop new animals is actually losing people. methods ,and technology for costNobody wants .to study these soeffectively reducing environmental called unappealing areas but the impacts of human activity. more sexy molecular biology. A more “The primary responsibility being current example is the ignorance of to involve student research and
to
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Computer Tip of the Week. Computer
by Phillip Chee Imprint staff
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Wo&ng with Prof. Graeme Hirst Df the University of Toronto, researcher Julie Payette is developing a system that permits the computer to diagnose stylistic errors. The comm
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