Talk:Margaret Masterman

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Who wrote this? I should talk to you. My company Intelligent Artefacts (see ST_Robotics ) supplied some computers to the CLRU in 1981 and we helped get code going to start natural language translation. Margaret's concept was to break a sentence into "breath groups" each of which had a meaning. The meaning was then translated into the target language and the sentence reconstructed. The only natural language translation available at the time was Systran which was dictionary and rule based. These computers were set up in CLRU in Millington Road in Cambridge and programmed in Forth (version written by myself). This should be incorporated into the article in some way.

If I don't hear from anyone I'll go ahead and make a section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robotics1 (talk • contribs) 21:02, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Anyone is welcome to contribute, that's the spirit of wikipedia. However, be sure to reference appropriate sources, wikipedia strives for verifiable accuracy. -- X7q (talk) 22:37, 25 October 2012 (UTC)


 * lol, I don't need the tutorial. I've been a contributer/editor for 7 years - I mostly just maintain and update industrial robots. In this case I knew Margaret personally. I was the one who supplied the computers and installed them in Millington Road. There were a number of students from the university working on the project, but I can't find them. However there are no end of papers and references to her work on computer translation and even the breath groups so I clearly need to cast around wider. Your WP article is an excellent start but does not mention computer translation yet she was an unsung pioneer. This will make an interesting project. Robotics1 (talk) 08:22, 26 October 2012 (UTC)


 * ok, this will be my addition to the "work" section:

Margaret restarted the CLRU in 1980 with William Williams in the hope that the new breed of micro-computers could be used to develop her algorithms for natural language translation. Margaret walked the 7 miles from Millington Road in Cambridge to Orwell and purchased two North Star Horizon computers from Intelligent Artefacts (see ST_Robotics). These were installed with Forth, written by David Sands and used by various students from the University of Cambridge who programmed Margaret's algorithms into the computers. Margaret's approach to natural language translation at this time was to split a sentence up into segments she called "breath groups". Since each breath group had a unique meaning it could be translated into the target language and the target sentence reconstructed using the translated breath groups. This contrasted with the predominant language translation techniques of the time, notably Systran which used a dictionary and rule based system.

When Margaret died in 1986 William Williams was forced to close down the CLRU and the research has never been continued.

Robotics1 (talk) 17:33, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Any reason why her picture has disappeared? Robotics1 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:26, 9 September 2019 (UTC)