[Wikimedia-l] The case for supporting open source machine translation

[Mathias Schindler]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:


> Could open source MT be such a strategic investment? I don't know, but
> I'd like to at least raise the question. I think the alternative will
> be, for the foreseeable future, to accept that this piece of
> technology will be proprietary, and to rely on goodwill for any
> integration that concerns Wikimedia. Not the worst outcome, but also
> not the best one.
>
> Are there open source MT efforts that are close enough to merit
> scrutiny?

http://www.statmt.org/moses/ is live an kicking. Someone with a
background in computer linguistics should have a close look at them.

I would like to mention however that there are a couple of cases in
which commercial companies could be convinced to open source some of
their software, for example Mozilla. Google has open sourced terract
for OCR. Google might see the value of their translation efforts in
more than just the software but also in the actual integration in some
of their products (Gmail, Goggles, Glass) so that open sourcing it
would not hurt their financial interests. It appears to me that the
cost vs. the potential gain for everyone of simply asking a company
like Google or Microsoft if they are willing to negotiate.

In any case, I would love to see WMF engage in the topic of machine translation.

Mathias