In the transfer system, Machine Translation Toolkit, developed by Executive Communication Systems, of Provo, Utah, transfer is based on LFG f-structure representations. In the interlingua system, PONS, constructed by Helge Dyvik, Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Bergen, situation schemata representing the semantics of the source language text are employed as interlingua descriptions. The aim of the project is to find out to what extent the two different strategies, which have been employed in the systems, are able to maintain translational equivalence when put to the task of translating the same set of sentences. Since both applications are development environments for machine translation, and not ready made systems, the investigation will focus on potential for improvement and extendability, given the principles on which system design is based. The notion of 'translational equivalence' denotes the relation that holds between source and target language expressions which are accepted as valid translations of each other.
Analysis produces a source language dependent representation of input text.
During transfer this is transformed into a target language dependent representation which is the basis for target text generation. In principle, language pair specific information is employed only during transfer. In an interlingua system source sentence analysis yields a representation of the input string which is, ideally, language neutral, or at least neutral between source and target language. Because it is language neutral it is referred to as an 'interlingua' representation. Target text generation can be based directly on the interlingua representation.