Letter on a Paper by Eugene Schwartz and Adrienne Kleiboemer
In a recent paper, Schwartz and Kleiboemer (1967) aim at finding the conditions under which incorporation of composite words in a word dictionary results in increased compression efficiency. The conditions they find are asserted to be necessary and sufficient. It is the purpose of this letter "to show that the conditions they obtain are not necessary and to indicate that the range of validity of their sufficiency is, in most cases, too restricted to be useful. Let us adopt the total number of bits required to encode a given sample of text as a measure of the compression efficiency obtained by the use of a certain dictionary. This measure also seems to be the one implicitly used by Schwartz and Kleiboemer. The failure of the necessity of the conditions follows then f r o m Schwartz and Kleiboemer's omission to consider the total number of dictionary look-ups required to encode the sample. In fact, let W be the total number of simple words in the given sample (number of look-ups in the word dictionary), W' be the total number of composite words in the given sample (number of look-ups in the composite word dictionary), L be the total number of letters in the given sample, B be the total number of bits necessary to encode the given sam= ple when simple words are used, B' be the total number of bits necessary to encode the given sample when composite words are used. We say that encoding with a composite-word dictionary is more efficient, with respect to the given sample, than encoding with a simple-word dictionary, if B' < B. But,
A Language Element for Compression Coding
It has been a matter of convenience that language codes have utilized statistical aspects of easily identified language elements such as letters and words although there is no a priori reason to indicate that these are the natural elements of coding in the brain. Other aspects of total redundancy including m-word elements and grammatical constraints are considered in this paper. Conditions are established under which greater compression is achieved by mapping m-words from a source language into a single code word. The results of tests which utilized several language elements are reported and suggestions are made for utilizing some of the techniques of mechanical translation to achieve maximum compression.
MT and the Swiss language service providers: an analysis and training perspective
Switzerland is perceived as a highly multilingual country, with four national languages and a solid translation tradition in official, administrative and corporate settings, now even extended to include English. A research case study was set up to investigate the understanding and use of translation and language technologies by Swiss language service providers. This paper highlights some findings, particularly focusing upon the issue of translation automation processes in multilingual documentation production, with a view not only to spot preconceptions or knowledge gaps about MT, but also to 
suggest some training principles. We will argue that training activities ought to present MT systems as 
key aiding components of translator workbenches and, their output, as a valid linguistic resource for further human refining, if necessary. Moreover, in line with the idea that MT can be part and parcel of multilingual content production cycles, we will look at the interaction of MT with controlled language, CAT tools and terminology work. In sum, we will make explicit the usefulness of MT against the 
widespread prejudice that investing in MT does not return any benefits given the ‘low and hilarious quality of its output’, as quoted by most of the interviewees of our case study.