Axel J. Schafmeister, Shepard Fox Communications
Munich (pts017/10.04.2013/11:00) – German pioneer of modern machine translation nominated for European Inventor Award
* Philipp Köhn from Erlangen nominated for „European Inventor Award, Research Category“
EPA President Benoît Battistelli: „Köhn’s development is a quantum leap in machine translation of texts“
* Basic idea: instead of words, entire sentence parts are compared and translated
* Google and Microsoft also rely on Köhn’s „statistical machine translation“
* With Jörg Horzel (solar cell technology) another German nominee
The German inventor Philipp Köhn from Erlangen has been nominated by the European Patent Office (EPO) for the European Inventor Award 2013. He is one of three finalists in the category „Research“. Europe’s most important award for innovation will be presented by the European Patent Office on 28. May in Amsterdam at a gala in front of an international audience in the presence of Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands.
That all people understand each other, regardless of the language that they speak, is an old dream of humanity. Many misunderstandings would be avoided, knowledge could be shared faster and boost progress. Philipp Köhn was not able to fulfill this dream, but he paved the way for overcoming language barriers by greatly improving the machine translation of texts from one language to another and ensuring a quantum leap in the quality, speed and availability of these translations.
Philipp Köhn developed the „statistical machine translation“. The basic principle: The computer no longer translates word for word, but sentence parts. This increases the performance and quality of machine translations many times over: They can interpret words in their content context.
In addition, the system gets better with each translation: Instead of having to be programmed with all possible meanings, the computer independently learns how best to translate by evaluating existing translation examples. The more frequently certain sentence constructions occur in it, the greater the probability that they are correct in content. In „statistical machine translation,“ the computer assembles the parts of sentences as they are most used statistically.
The larger the database used to compare sentence parts or text components worldwide, the better the translation. Köhn himself ensures that his invention is open to everyone and thus the number of comparative texts grows as quickly as possible.
From the University of Edinburgh where Köhn teaches, he runs his own open source translation platform „Moses“, which is freely available for everyone to use and continuously improve. Patented and thus protected are the underlying methods that Köhn and colleagues developed in 2003 as a doctoral student of the University of Southern California (USC).
The procedures are also based on the Internet translation services of Google and Microsoft, which are now available as free services to all Internet users. Without the groundbreaking work of Köhn and his colleagues, they would be inconceivable.
‚The processes developed by Philipp Köhn and his colleagues are evidence of Europe’s innovative strength. It means a quantum leap in accessible communication between people in all continents. It therefore makes a significant contribution to strengthening the technical performance of the economy and thus the competitiveness of Europe. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, such forward-looking inventions are indispensable, said EPA President Benoît Battistelli at the announcement of the nominations for the Inventor Award.
Köhn’s technology is also based on the free PatentTranslate service developed and launched by the EPO with Google, which will enable the machine translation of over 80 million patents from and into all relevant languages by the end of 2014.
The „statistical machine translation“ has already led to many new start-ups of companies that take over „Moses“ and develop and offer further offers on this basis. As a result, the translation software market has received a big boost and has already grown to a volume of more than half a billion euros. By 2017, it is estimated that the market should be worth three billion euros.
Nevertheless, Köhn is modest: There is a large market worldwide for translations that serve the purpose of text understanding and are reliable, but do not have to be quite perfect. This can be achieved by statistical machine translation. But it will not make the individual work of a translator superfluous in the foreseeable future.
Jörg Horzel’s discovery has revolutionised the production of solar cells
Like Philipp Köhn, Jörg Horzel, a native of Karlsruhe, is also nominated for the Inventor Award in the category „Research“. But that is not the only common ground. Similar to Köhn, who helped make translation affordable and accessible to many people, Horzel’s invention makes silicon solar cell production more efficient and cheaper.
About the European Inventor Award
The European Inventor Award is the most important prize for innovation in Europe. It has been awarded annually by the European Patent Office (EPO) since 2006. In 2013, the awards ceremony will take place in Amsterdam on 28 May. A public prize will also be awarded for the first time.
The award recognizes individual inventors or teams who help to find technical answers to the most important challenges of our time. In addition, a jury of internationally renowned experts examines the extent to which these inventors have contributed to social progress, job creation and prosperity.
About EPO
With around 7 000 employees, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the largest European public service institutions. The headquarters are in Munich; There are offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna. The EPO was established to promote cooperation between European countries in the field of patents. Through the central grant procedure at the EPO, inventors can obtain patent protection in some or all 38 EPO member states. The EPO is also the world’s most important authority for patent searches and patent information.
For more information, photos, videos, TV-enabled materials on the European Inventor Award: http://www.epo-presschannel.com
Contact:
Oswald Schröder
Speaker, European Patent Office
Tel: +49 89 2399-1800
oschroeder@epo.org
Rainer Osterwalder
Deputy Spokesperson, European Patent Office
Tel: +49 89 2399-1820
Mobile: +49 163 8399527
rosterwalder@epo.org
Shepard Fox Communications
Axel J. Schafmeister
Tel. +49 89 2109-3007
Mobile +41 78 714 8010
axel.schafmeister@shepard-fox.com
(End)
Source: Shepard Fox Communications
Contact person: Axel J. Schafmeister
Tel: +49 89 2109-3007
Email: axel.schafmeister@shepard-fox.com
Website: www.shepard-fox.com
[ Quelle: http://www.pressetext.com/news/20130410017 ]