[Reproduced by permission of the Rockefeller Foundation Archives]
March 4, 1947
Dear Norbert:
I was terribly sorry, when in Cambridge recently, that I got unavoidably
held up by several unexpected jobs, and did not get a chance to
see you.
One thing I wanted to ask you about is this. A most serious
problem, for UNESCO and for the constructive and peaceful future of the
planet, is the problem of translation, as it unavoidably affects the
communication between peoples. Huxley has recently told me that they are
appalled by the magnitude and the importance of the translation job.
Recognizing fully, even though necessarily vaguely, the semantic
difficulties because of multiple meanings, etc., I have wondered if it
were unthinkable to design a computer which would translate. Even if it
would translate only scientific material (where the semantic difficulties
are very notably less), and even if it did produce an inelegant (but
intelligible) result, it would seem to me worth while.
Also knowing nothing official about, but having guessed and
inferred considerable about, powerful new mechanized methods in cryptography methods
which I believe succeed even when one does not know what language
has been coded - one naturally wonders if the problem of translation could
conceivably be treated as a problem in cryptography. When I look at an
article in Russian, I say "This is really written in English, but it has
been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode."
Have you ever thought about this? As P. linguist and expert on
computers, do you think it is worth thinking about?
Cordially,
Warren Weaver.
Professor Norbert Wiener
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge 39, Massachusetts
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MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CAMBRIDGE 3 MASS.
DEPARTMENTOFMATHEMATICS April 30, 1947
.
Mr. Warren Weaver
The Rockefeller Foundation
49 West 49th Street
New York 20, N. Y.
Dear Warren:
First, I want to thank you and The Rockefeller
Foundation for the almost unlimited number of favors
that I have been receiving. I think and hope, at any
rate, that we shall be able to come across in such a
way as to at least partly justify your expenditure.
Second - as to the problem of mechanical translation,
I frankly am afraid the boundaries of words in
different languages are too vague and the emotional and
international connotations are too extensive to make any
quasi mechanical translation scheme very hopeful. I will
admit that basic English seems to indicate that we can go
further than we have generally done in the mechanization
of speech, but you must remember that in certain respects
basic English is the reverse of mechanical and throws upon
such words as "get," a burden, which is much greater than
most words carry in conventional English. At the present
time, the mechanization of language, beyond such a stage as
the design of photoelectric reading opportunities for the
blind, seems very premature. By the way, I have been fascinated
by McCulloch's work on such apparatus, and, as you
probably know, he finds the wiring diagram of apparatus of
this kind turns out to be surprisingly like the microscopic
analogy of the visual cortex in the brain.
I have heard that your health is much better, and I
certainly hope so. I shall try to look you up before I
sail for France.
Sincerely yours,
NW/ET Norbert Wiener
May 9, 1947
Dear Norbert:
Thank you for your letter of April 30. I am sure that
Dr. Morrison and I will both be very glad to have you tell us,
from tine to time, about the progress of your collaborative program
with Rosenblueth. And I will be most interested, after your return
from France, to hear your comments on your trip there.
I am disappointed but not surprised by your comments on
the translation problem. The difficulty you mention concerning
Basic seems to me to have a rather easy answer. It is, of course,
true that Basic puts multiple use on an action verb such as "get."
But even so, the two-word combinations such as "get up," "get over,"
"get back," etc., are, in Basic, not really very numerous. Suppose
we take a vocabulary of 2,000 words, and admit for good measure
all the two-word combinations as if they were single words. The
vocabulary is still only four million: and that is not so
formidable a number to a modern computer, is it?
Cordially,
Warren Weaver.
Professor Norbert Wiener
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge 59, Massachusetts
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