Machine translation of marine forecasts, quaterly company reports and recipes between Swedish, English, Malay and Chinese

This paper will report on four machine translation projects dealing with restricted domains and controlled or semi-controlled language. The computer program Seatra translates marine forecasts between Swedish and English. It is in daily use by the Swedish meteorological agency (SMHI) and generally needs no postediting. The same basic program but with different lexicons is used in the program Maltra which can translate official Malaysian marine forecasts into English and Chinese. The program Reptra dealing with quarterly company reports and Receptra dealing with recipes use the same platform. All these programs (which can be used bidirectionally) will be presented and commented on, above all from a linguistic point of view. It is suggested that no more than 3 mistakes per 100 words be accepted if the postediting should not be too heavy, and this quality can be obtained in restricted-domain systems.