Weidner Communications Inc
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Weidner Communications Inc. was founded by Stephen Weidner in 1977 who marketed the Weidner Machine Translation System produced at Eyring Research Institute under the authority of Translation Associates in Provo, Utah. Weidner marketed the world's first "Multi-Lingual Word Processing System" as reported in The Wall Street Journal:
The device is a word-processing machine, an electronic typewriter linked to a video screen and a Digital Equipment Corp. PDP 11/34 minicomputer.
The product, which will be officially unveiled a week from today at a convention in New York of the American Translators Association has been demonstrated in recent weeks to such professionals as Thomas Bauman, president-elect of the association. “The Weidner machine comes closer to being a true aid to the professional translator than anything I’ve ever personally seen before. It is a dynamic new approach and a great help,” says Mr. Bauman, who directs translation services for Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco.
Initially, the machine, known as the Multi-Lingual Word Processing System, will be offered in a Spanish-to-English version. It is being developed to handle as many as 10 languages including Russian, Japanese, Hebrew and Arabic. A machine able to aid four translators at once will sell for about $150,000.
Demand for the device seems “quite reasonable,” according to Ted J. Crowther, director of the computer sciences division of Eyring Research Institute, of Provo Utah, the Brigham Young University spin-off that helped develop the multilingual aid. “Five thousand U.S. companies alone do business in Latin America,” he says, “and 500 of them translate more than a million words a year. That’s a lot of translating.” (California Firm to Unveil a Computer That Processes Words for Translators, By Richard A. Shaffer, WSJ, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 1978 page 17)
Also reported in The Deseret News, the software instantaneously does about 85% of the processes of a human translator:
A computer that translates from Spanish to English was brought to its present stage of development at the Eyring Research Institute in Provo. With 85 percent accuracy, the system using a standard mini-computer, does 85 percent of the translator's work for him. The Eyring Institute succeeded with the translator development where others including such prestigious institutions as Harvard and Yale universities have failed. (The Deseret News, Tuesday, Oct. 31 1978.)
This new technology that taught computers to process human languages was invented by Bruce Wydner, and was named the "Weidner Multi-lingual Word Processor" after Bruce Wydner's brother Stephen Weidner who started Weidner Communications, Inc. as the exclusive wholesaler to market the product for Wydner's Company.
Wydner's Language Science software was officially demonstrated for the first time as the basis of cost-effective Machine Translation on September 12, 1978 at the Eyring Research Institute off-campus from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Thomas Bauman and Leland Wright of the American Translators Association arrived in Provo, Utah on September 11, 1978 to attend the demonstration at ERI. After attending the demonstration Thomas Bauman said, “I’ve never been converted to anything so fast in my life.” He subsequently extended an invitation for Wydner to attend the annual meeting of the American Translators Association that following November where the Weidner Machine Translation System was heralded as the hoped-for breakthrough in machine translation.
Wydner's invention was named "Natural Language Processing" NLP by the Computer Industry and "Human Language Technology" HLT by the U.S. Military.
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[edit] Multi-Lingual Word Processing System
The Weidner "Multi-Lingual Word Processing System" is based on the work of Bruce Wydner, as demonstrated in Wydner's copyrighted text books. These text books show how the language technology of China's Writing System became the 85% basis of human language technology for processing human languages on the computer and in machine translation systems today.
The Weidner Engine works by mapping the approximately 460,000 words in the English Dictionary (as in other target languages) to the 10,000 "Root" words (an Interlingual Lexicon) as demonstrated by the Chinese Writing System. Additionally, inflected, conjugated word changes and endings are automatically parsed from the root words by a revolutionary parsing engine and are then associated to a specific word type by language rules based on the sense of sight. Each word (or expression) is parsed, compared to the spell-check lexicon and mapped to the interlingual lexicon for subsequent translation to the target language. If the target language is the same as the inputted language the result is a word processed document in the original language. Tools include an aid for spelling and alternate word look-up.
What Bruce Wydner was able to do through 1978 was to put the Oriental Writing System into computers to allow them to process the words of Occidental Languages by those "Ancient Oriental Natural Language Processing" Rules. In reaction to that innovation, the recognized highest experts on the subject of Translation in the World, the Experts on Translation for the Commission of the European Union, said that this (to them) "new translation system" of Bruce Wydner "renewed" their "hope" for Machine Translation that would lead them to "Better Translation for Better Communication."
From 1966 to 1978: the crossing of the desert. 1978: hope renewed. From about 1978 onwards, a new wind began to blow in the world of MT.
... a new translation system was developed in the United States and marketed simultaneously in the United States and Europe by the Weidner Company. (Better Translation for Better Communication, Commissioned by the CEC, G. Van Slyke, 1983, Pergamon Press, Paris, France).
While the Commission of the European Communities watched in amazement at the introduction of the invention of Natural Language Processing, offered by Weidner, the British reacted with jealousy and disdain for the American ownership of NLP technology.
The computer industry is in the early stages of a revolution. Its capability for processing natural languages - will advance dramatically over the next few years. Teaching computers to understand English - or any other natural language ... has always been unrealistic. Now the situation is beginning to change.
Some big mainframe-based systems have been in use since the late 1960s, doing crude translations. Only in 1984 did a new generation of companies such as ... Weidner seriously begin to offer systems for the office market.
Aside from the economic penalties, it will be galling if Britain ends up paying America royalties to use the English language with its computers.
Short of waving a magic wand to make the British more enterprising and determined, there is no ideal way out of this trap. The best route may be to join the Americans instead of being beaten by them. (Natural language computing: the commercial applications, by Tim Johnson, published by Ovum Ltd, 1985 pages 1, 3 & 79)
[edit] Translation Associates and Eyring Research Institute
Human Language Technology was envisioned and created by its original owner Bruce Wydner as demonstrated in his 1971 copyrighted book “The Fastest Way To Learn Spanish Is To See It”, then further developed at the Spanish New Learning Center, by Bruce Wydner and Michael McOmber as demonstrated in their 1975 copyrighted book by the same name.
The production of the Multi-Lingual Word Processing System included Bruce Wydner and his friends (Warren Davidson, Dale Miller, and Lowell Randall) who formed, the Inns of the Temple, Inc., dba Translation Associates. Wydner, representing his company, made contracts with his brother Stephen Weidner for the Marketing, and with Eyring Research Institute in Provo, Utah for the computer services, Eyring’s computer, and the programming skills of Eyring's bi-lingual programmer Bruce Bastian.
Bruce Bastian would later go on to create the WordPerfect Corporation based on this work and resources made available to him at Eyring Research Institute, as reported by Carlyle Harmon a Founder and Director of Eyring Research Institute:
Computer Translation Project - for Weidner Co. developed a computer processing system to translate foreign languages using Bruce C. Wydner's special machine translation concepts that were used in the European Translation System (1979), where Bruce C. Wydner is still called the "Father of Cost Effective Machine Translation." Bruce Bastian and Alan Ashton developed a new "word" processing system which replaced the old Cobol, Pascal, Star, and other "learned" computer languages. Wydner’s concept used phrases in the same way WordPerfect used words. With this system key (card) punching and huge main-frame computers were replaced with the PC computers as they came into being. WordPerfect software, with IBM using it, went worldwide. After ten years the two owners sold WordPerfect for about one and one-half billion dollars and left 6,000 people unemployed. A number of technical people who had their start at ERI went with both WordPerfect and Novell. Novell sold the WordPerfect portion to a Canadian company and it is now (1995) known as Corel WordPerfect.
ERI spawned many high-tech spin-offs, including WordPerfect, Novell, and Dynix in computers and some in the military and communication areas that have all benefited the world. (The Life of Frank Carlyle Harmon, written by his wife Cleo Harmon, who was also the Secretary of Eyring, published 1999)
[edit] Original Weidner Program Acquired
In 1984 Weidner Communications, Inc. was acquired by Bravis International, one of Japan’s largest translation companies, but still maintained offices in Chicago and in Paris. During the mid 1980s Weidner Communications, Inc., WCC, was the largest translation company by sales volume in the United States. Later the Japanese sold Wydner’s technology to Intergraph Corporation of Alabama who later sold it to Transparent Language, Inc. of New Hampshire.
[edit] SDL International, Enterprise Translation Server
The Weidner Engine is the basis of freetranslation.com[1] as reported by Michael Quinlan, President of Transparent Language, Inc. who created the translation website, he wrote the following:
Our Enterprise Translation Server (based on the original Weidner engine) is considered the fastest of the world-class translation technologies, and also is currently the most advanced implementation of automatic translation for large Enterprises. (Letter from Michael Quinlan to Jeff Bateson, March 8, 2000).
The original Weidner Engine was recently (2001) bought by SDL International of England.
[edit] Lionbridge, iTranslator
A copy of the Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing software was requested by the German Government for the Siemens Corporation of Germany in September 1980 and was nick-named the Siemens-Weidner Engine (originally English-German). This revolutionary multi-lingual word processing engine became foundational in the development of the Metal MT project according to John White of the Siemens Corporation.
After the Metal MT development Rights to the Siemens-Weidner Engine were sold to a Belgium company, Lernout & Hauspie.
The Siemens copy of the Weidner Multi-lingual Word Processing software has since been acquired through the purchase of assets of Lernout & Hauspie by Browne Global Solutions, Inc., which was later acquired by Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. and is demonstrated in their itranslator software. [2]
[edit] The Beginning of Modern Word Processing
[edit] Microsoft Word
Lernout & Hauspie sold a copy of Wydner's language technology to the Microsoft Corporation to be used in Microsoft Word.
[edit] WordPerfect
Eyring Research Institute gave a copy of Wydner's technology and the use of Eyring's computer to Bruce Bastian (co-founder of WordPerfect) who was one of the original programmer helpers for Bruce Wydner in the production of the original Weidner Engine.
Ronald G. Hansen, the President of the Eyring Research Institute, reportedly asked Bruce Wydner the following: "Bruce Bastian says that this Multilingual Wordprocessor of yours has a lot more uses than just translating languages. He says that it could be used to produce monolingual word processors and wants to know if you will let him do that."
With Eyring's assistance and with Wydner's technology, Alan Ashton said that, “Bruce Bastian did all of the formatting of the Word Processor Program, the main part of the Program that makes it work so well." That Format was expressed in that 1989 WordPerfect Users Manual as, "If you want to compose the Rules to process all of the words in a language, you must start with the Rules to process the most-used words." That Format is the Format of the Ancient Natural Language Processing System by which the people of the Orient have been Processing the Words of their many Mutually Unintelligible Spoken Languages for over 3,000 years.
[edit] Intelligent Systems Technology (ARPA) and (SISTO)
A third copy of the Weidner Engine was given by Eyring Research Institute to the U.S. Air Force Missile Directorate at Hill Air Force Base near Ogden, Utah to produce in top military secrecy, the Intelligent Systems Technology Software that was foundational to the later named Reagan Star Wars program.
After the ALPAC Report in 1966, President David O. McKay of the LDS Church, apparently, approached one US Government operation that continued seeking the technological advances in Human Language Technology, the Missile Directorate of the US Air Force, at Hill Air Force Base, to fund the transfer, in Top Military Secrecy, of any such technological advances, from the BYU Linguistics Department’s Project to ERI facilities, in order for it to try to take any Human Language Technology from there to make it, through collaboration with the US Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and its Software and Intelligent Systems Technology Office (SISTO), into Missile Guidance Software that would be superior to any producible by the Soviet Union.
[edit] Continuing Development
Bruce Wydner who retained the original copyright for his technology, demonstrates today in Salt Lake City, Utah, the improvements to the Original Wydner Engine as it has been improved to translate Spanish materials into English for a particular customer at nearly the 100% level of efficiency, www.fastfluency.org[3].
