Problems of German-English Automatic Translation 
Paul O. Samuelsdorff 
I. Aims and method 
The aim of any Automatic Translation project is to give 
a mechanical procedure for finding an equivalent ex- 
pression in the target lan6uage for any sentence in the 
source lan6uage. The aim of any lin6uistic translation 
project is to find the corresponding structures of the 
languages dealt with. With both of these aims in mind, 
the empirical method was adopted in the project describ- 
ed in this paper. 
2. Structure of the dictionar 7 
Two dictionaries are needed: an idiomatic dictio~ and 
a lexical dictionary. Both have next to each English en- 
try the Gex~an equivalent (or equivalents) and the syn- 
tactic and semantic information needed for producing a 
correct German sentence (and for choosing the correct 
equivalent, if necessary). The lexlcal dictionary may, 
for technical reasons, be subdivided into a dictionary 
for words of high frequency and a dictionary for words 
of low frequency. 
3. Syntactic Problems 
3.1. Morphological problems: choosin 6 the correct German 
suffixes. 
3.2. I~xloo18~cal problems: choosing the correct German 
article, pronoun or relative pronoun. 
3.3- Word order: finding the correct structure of German 
word-8~oups and sentences for the corresponding English 
structure. 
~. Semantic Problems 
~.I. Solvable problems: the correct German equivalent of 
an ambiguous English word may be found by testin 6 the 
environment. 
4.2. Partially solvable problems: the correct German 
equivalent can only be found by approximation. Possible 
solutions will be suggested. 
5- Examples 
Examples will be given to all of the above problems. 
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