Study on evaluating machine translation in cyber commons

Studies on evaluating the quality of Machine Translation ("MT") have been frequently conducted, while studies on evaluating the overall translation functions have not yet been done as far as is known by the authors. In this study, a functional evaluation of MT software was made including an evaluation based on mathematical analysis. As a result, it is found that functions vary considerably depending on each product. Objectives of functional evaluation include to research, study and evaluate what kind of functions; existing MT software have as well as the level of functionality, so that matters requiring attention, improvement points and constraints can be utilized for further development of MT software. Although this functional evaluation was conducted for English-Japanese MT software, these evaluation and studies are for general purposes independent of specific languages. Close relationship between Cyber Commons and MT systems is also discussed.