A Brief History
On January 7, 1954, Georgetown University teamed up with IBM to perform the first public computer translation of different languages automatically, showing the promise of speedier and easier translation tasks.
Digging Deeper
In the so-called “Georgetown–IBM experiment” the computer was tasked with translating over 60 sentences of the Russian language into English, although this early stage of computer translations required programs geared toward the general field discussed in the languages being translated.
The computer used in this experiment was an IBM 701, also known as the Defense Calculator or the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, developed in 1952. A civilian version available to businesses was the IBM 702. A derivative of the IBM 702, the IBM 650, became the first ever mass-produced electronic computer.
These computers used punch cards with little holes punched in them to run their programs, a system later matched by perforated tape used by other computer companies and later magnetic tape. Amazingly, the perforated or “punched tape” system was first used in 1725 by Basile Bouchon in France to run looms to make designs on silk cloth. Even today, the punched tape system is used to make uniform patches for police, fire, and military uniforms.
Today, we have translating aids such as “Google Translate” and hand held translation devices people can speak into to produce instant translations, including some cell phone apps, evidence of how far the computer translator has come.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Have you ever used a translation device or app?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Bowker, Lynne. Computer-Aided Translation Technology: A Practical Introduction. University of Ottawa Press, 2002.
Poibeau, Thierry. Machine Translation. The MIT Press, 2017.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Dan of an IBM 701 processor frame, showing 1,071 of the vacuum tubes, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
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