SDL Expands Commitment to Machine Translation

SDL (LSE: SDL), the leading provider of Global Information Management solutions, has opened a research and development facility in Europe to expand the company’s focus on machine translation. The new facility and team will be led by Bill Byrne, a leading research scientist in natural language processing and Reader in Information Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

SDL has been committed to machine translation for over a decade and the acquisition of Language Weaver in 2010 enabled the company to empower more enterprise customers and translators to leverage machine translation for their evolving business needs. Building on its commitment, this research team expansion will strategically accelerate the company’s advances and continued leadership in statistical machine translation and machine learning to make it applicable within a broader ecosystem.

“Extending our research organization allows SDL to dedicate more resources to advancing machine learning, statistical prediction, big data and machine-human synergy,” explained Daniel Marcu, Chief Scientific Officer at SDL. “These research disciplines are aligned with the technology vision across the SDL portfolio of products and are catalysts for innovation. By expanding our team across continents and university research programs, we are also able to draw on more diverse pools of experience and create more opportunities for students that want to join this growing field.”

Byrne, an accomplished research scientist in the areas of statistical modeling, speech recognition and statistical machine translation, will lead a group of researchers based in Cambridge, UK. Until 2004, he was Research Associate Professor at the Center for Language and Speech Processing, Johns Hopkins University (USA). His research focus is in statistical modeling for language processing and his dedication to advancing this field is evident by his extensive publication record.

“I am pleased to join the SDL team to continue to bridge the gap between research and industry,” explained Byrne. “We have seen tremendous interest in machine translation over the last several years and I look forward to building a team of leading researchers to support SDL’s long term vision.”