Re: Corpora: US company claims patent

Ken Beesley (Ken.Beesley@xrce.xerox.com)
Wed, 15 Oct 1997 15:43:09 +0200

> Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 10:44:06 +0100
> From: Bill Imlah <imlah@cre.canon.co.uk>

<snip>

> Not quite, I think. The patent describes a method of using a "created
> international language" as an intermediate pathway in translation.
> >From the description, it appears that it is specifically claiming the
> use of a created natural language as an interlingua in machine
> translation.

<snip>

> By the way, someone earlier suggested that this patent covered the use
> of Esperanto in general. Actually, it only covers its use as an
> interlingua in machine translation.

The BSO-DLT Machine Translation project, which ran for years in the
Netherlands, used a slightly enhanced form of Esperanto as an
interlingua. This project was well documented during the 80s and was
well known to anyone working in the field of MT. Toon Witkam was
one of the principal developers. I don't have my documentation to hand,
but I see some references under

http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/sals/past/nicholas.html

which mentions DLT and then proposes the use of Lojban (Loglan) as an
interlingua.

The MT systems of Ivan Guzman de Rojas used (ostensibly) a form of
Aymará as an interlingua. It has been suggested that it was a very
artificial form of Aymará.

Ken

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Kenneth R. Beesley ken.beesley@xrce.xerox.com
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