Welcome to the machine

The Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) is a translators association aimed at anyone interested in the use of computers to translate languages. This includes “people with translation needs, commercial system developers, researchers, sponsors and people studying, evaluating and understanding the science of machine translation (MT)”.

One of the main needs, for machine translation professionals, is to educate the public, keep them updated on important scientific techniques and principles involved in MT. This aid to translation professionals “provides an opportunity for commercial developers, users – both professional translators and casual MT users – and research scientists to meet” and share ideas.

The AMTA has members in Canada, Latin America and the United States of America. This translation association is the regional representative of a worldwide network of organisations concerning machine translation.

To become a member of the AMTA, you have to be based in the Western Hemisphere. It is a non-profit organisation. All members’ dues, as well as donations, may be tax-deductible in the United States.

According to the AMTA, to become a member of the association “is the best way to keep abreast of developments in the rapidly changing field of machine translation”. As a member, you will get a lot of benefits, including those concerning AMTA’s activities, such as conferences, summits and meetings.

AMTA organises workshops, seminars and symposia on MT, with discounts for members. There is also the biennial AMTA conference, which brings together MT users, companies, researchers and translation professionals to discuss and share their thoughts, as they compare systems over the four-day event. Other than that, there are regular conferences and meetings by sister organisations both in Europe and Asia. Members are kept up-to-date.

AMTA keeps its members constantly updated in terms of events and opportunities, both its own and the ones provided by partners.

At the moment, there are two membership options (both for a period of two years). Individual members pay 130 US dollars, student members pay 50 US dollars.

Publications

The AMTA has several publications dedicated to MT.

The Compendium of Translation Software is published twice a year. It is “a directory of machine translation systems and computer-aided translation support tools”. “This comprehensive directory of current commercial systems covers machine translation products (for all user categories), translation memory systems, translator workstations, localisation support tools, alignment tools, terminology management systems, electronic dictionaries, online translation services, etc.”

There is also the Machine Translation Archive, an “electronic repository of articles, books and papers in the field machine translation and computer-based translation technology”. It was launched in 2004, and it covers comprehensive publications since 2000, mainly from conference proceedings.

The AMTA also has a journal called Machine Translation (discounts for members available), published quarterly, “with in-depth scholarly articles on aspects of machine translation”.

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