SYSTRAN
Encyclopedia
SYSTRAN, founded by Dr. Peter Toma
in 1968, is one of the oldest machine translation
companies. SYSTRAN has done extensive work for the United States Department of Defense
and the European Commission
.
SYSTRAN provides the technology for Yahoo! Babel Fish among others. It was used by Google's language tools until circa 2007.
SYSTRAN is used by the Dashboard Translation widget in Mac OS X
.
Commercial versions of SYSTRAN can run on Microsoft Windows
(including Windows Mobile
), Linux
, and Solaris. Historically, Systran systems used Rule-based machine translation
(RbMT) technology. With the release of Systran Server 7 in 2010, Systran implemented a hybrid rule-based/Statistical machine translation
(SMT) technology which was the first of its kind in the marketplace.
As of 2008, the company had 59 employees of whom 26 are computational experts and 15 computational linguists. The number of employees decreased from 70 in 2006 to 65 in 2007.
machine translation effort, SYSTRAN was one of the few machine translation systems to survive the major decrease of funding after the ALPAC Report
of the mid-1960s. The company was established in La Jolla
in California to work on translation of Russian to English text for the United States Air Force
during the Cold War
. Large numbers of Russian scientific and technical documents were translated using SYSTRAN under the auspices of the USAF Foreign Technology Division (later the National Air and Space Intelligence Center) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
, Ohio. The quality of the translations, although only approximate, was usually adequate for understanding content.
The company was sold in 1986 to the Gachot family, based in Paris
, and is now traded publicly on the French stock exchange. Its company headquarters is in Paris, whle its US headquarters is in La Jolla, CA.
During the dot-com boom, language industry
started a new era, and SYSTRAN entered into agreements with a number of translation integrators, the most successful of these being WorldLingo.
Peter Toma
Dr. Peter Toma is a Hungarian-born computer scientist and linguistics researcher.Toma developed and commercialised the SYSTRAN machine translation system...
in 1968, is one of the oldest machine translation
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...
companies. SYSTRAN has done extensive work for the United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
and the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
.
SYSTRAN provides the technology for Yahoo! Babel Fish among others. It was used by Google's language tools until circa 2007.
SYSTRAN is used by the Dashboard Translation widget in Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
.
Commercial versions of SYSTRAN can run on Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
(including Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
), Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, and Solaris. Historically, Systran systems used Rule-based machine translation
Rule-based machine translation
Rule-based Machine Translation is a general term that denotes machine translation systems based on linguistic information about source and target languages basically retrieved from dictionaries and grammars covering the main semantic, morphological, and syntactic...
(RbMT) technology. With the release of Systran Server 7 in 2010, Systran implemented a hybrid rule-based/Statistical machine translation
Statistical machine translation
Statistical machine translation is a machine translation paradigm where translations are generated on the basis of statistical models whose parameters are derived from the analysis of bilingual text corpora...
(SMT) technology which was the first of its kind in the marketplace.
As of 2008, the company had 59 employees of whom 26 are computational experts and 15 computational linguists. The number of employees decreased from 70 in 2006 to 65 in 2007.
History
With its origin in the GeorgetownGeorgetown-IBM experiment
The Georgetown-IBM experiment was an influential demonstration of machine translation, which was performed during January 7, 1954. Developed jointly by the Georgetown University and IBM, the experiment involved completely automatic translation of more than sixty Russian sentences into...
machine translation effort, SYSTRAN was one of the few machine translation systems to survive the major decrease of funding after the ALPAC Report
ALPAC
ALPAC was a committee of seven scientists led by John R. Pierce, established in 1964 by the U. S. Government in order to evaluate the progress in computational linguistics in general and machine translation in particular...
of the mid-1960s. The company was established in La Jolla
La Jolla, San Diego, California
La Jolla is an affluent, hilly seaside resort community, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean in Southern California within the northern city limits of San Diego. La Jolla had the highest home prices in the nation in 2008 and 2009; the average price of a standardized...
in California to work on translation of Russian to English text for the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Large numbers of Russian scientific and technical documents were translated using SYSTRAN under the auspices of the USAF Foreign Technology Division (later the National Air and Space Intelligence Center) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in Greene and Montgomery counties in the state of Ohio. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is located approximately...
, Ohio. The quality of the translations, although only approximate, was usually adequate for understanding content.
The company was sold in 1986 to the Gachot family, based in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and is now traded publicly on the French stock exchange. Its company headquarters is in Paris, whle its US headquarters is in La Jolla, CA.
During the dot-com boom, language industry
Language industry
The language industry is the sector of activity dedicated to designing, producing, and marketing tools, products, or services related to computerized language processing...
started a new era, and SYSTRAN entered into agreements with a number of translation integrators, the most successful of these being WorldLingo.
Business situation
Most of SYSTRAN's revenue comes from a few customers. 57.1% comes from the 10 main customers and the three largest customers account for 10.9%, 8.9% and 8.9% of its revenues, respectively. Revenues have been declining for the past few years: 10.2 million euros in 2004, 10.1 million euros in 2005, 9.3 million euros in 2006, 8.8 million euros in 2007 and 7.6 million euros in 2008.Languages
Here is a list of the source and target languages SYSTRAN works with. Many of the pairs are to or from English or French.- RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
into EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
(1968) - English into Russian (1973) for the Apollo-Soyuz project
- English source (1975) for the European CommissionEuropean CommissionThe European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
- Arabic
- ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
- DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
- DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
- FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
- GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
- GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
- HindiHindiStandard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
- ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
- JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
- KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
- NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
- Serbo-CroatianSerbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
- SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
- SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
- PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
- PolishPolish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
- PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
- UkrainianUkrainian languageUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
- UrduUrduUrdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
See also
- Asia OnlineAsia OnlineAsia Online is a privately owned company backed by individual investors and institutional venture capital. Its corporate headquarters are in Singapore, and it has significant operations in Bangkok, Thailand, with R&D activities throughout Asia and expanding sales operations in Europe and North...
- Bilingual dictionaryBilingual dictionaryA bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing...
- Bing Translator
- Comparison of machine translation applicationsComparison of machine translation applicationsA machine translation application is a program which can translate text or speech from one natural language to another. Machine translation applications are essential to the modern language industry...
- Google TranslateGoogle TranslateGoogle Translate is a free statistical machine translation service provided by Google Inc. to translate a section of text, document or webpage, into another language.The service was introduced in April 28, 2006 for the Arabic language...
- IdiomaXIdiomaXIdiomaX LLC is a translation software company that has been offering translation products and services for the international market since 1996.- History :IdiomaX was established in 1996...