2006 Machine Translation Evaluation Results Posted

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has posted at www.nist.gov/speech/tests/mt the results of the NIST 2006 Machine Translation Evaluation (MT-06), part of an ongoing series assessing the effectiveness of the technologies underlying computerized text language translation systems. NIST conducts these evaluations in order to support machine translation (MT) research and help advance the state of the art in MT technology.

MT-06 consisted of two tasks where each task required performing translation of text from a given source language into the target language. The source languages were Arabic and Chinese, and the target language was English. Research algorithms and translation system output—not the systems themselves—were studied in MT-06. These tests should not be considered a product-testing exercise and the results should not be used to make conclusions regarding which commercial products are best for a particular application.

MT-06 results are not to be construed or represented as endorsements of any participant's system or commercial product, or taken as official findings on the part of NIST or the U.S. government.