Weidner Communications

Weidner Communications Inc. was founded by Stephen Weidner in 1977 and marketed the “Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing System" as it was produced at the Eyring Research Institute through 1978, by his brother's (Bruce Wydner) company, The Inns of the Temple Inc., in Provo, Utah.

This Software also called, “Cost-Effective” Machine Translation, has made its way into many modern Word Processing and Machine Translation systems.

History

In conjunction with its introduction to the market, the Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing System was first reported on in 1978 in the "Wall Street Journal" as “Quadrupling Translation Volume” and the "Deseret News" as “halving translation costs and of increasing output by at least 400 percent.” [cite news|title=California Firm to Unveil a Computer That Processes Words for Translators|author=Richard A. Shaffer|publisher="Wall Street Journal"|date=Tuesday, 1978-10-24] [cite news|title=Provo researchers help perfect computer-translator|author=Arnold Irving|publisher="Deseret News"|date=Tuesday, 1978-10-31]

This new technology was demonstrated to translation experts on September 12, 1978 at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Thomas Bauman and Leland Wright of the American Translators Association who had arrived on September 11, 1978, in Provo, Utah to view a demonstration of the The Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing System. After attending the demonstration Thomas Bauman said, “I’ve never been so 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 October where the Weidner Machine Translation System hailed a hoped-for breakthrough in machine translation. (Geoffrey Kingscott, 1992)

The Weidner "Multi-Lingual Word Processing System" is based on the research and work of Bruce Wydner, as demonstrated in his copyrighted text books. The Fastest Way To Learn Spanish Is To See IT! (Learn to read Spanish in 24 hours) ©1971 and 1975. These text books show how the language technology of China's Ancient Writing System is used to scientifically explain how language works. This technology is the basis of the Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing System, and was programmed for processing human languages on the low-cost computers of the late 1970s and as part of machine translation and word processing software 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/thoughts (an Interlingual Lexicon) as demonstrated by the technology of the Chinese Writing System. Additionally, inflected, conjugated word changes and endings are automatically parsed from the root words by a parsing engine, 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 language rules result is a word processed document in the original language. Tools included 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." (G. Van Slype, 1983)

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. (G. Van Slype, 1983)

Ovum analyst Tim Johnson adds his perspective to the History of Machine Translation.

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. (Tim Johnson, 1985)

Even computing stalwarts like Systran have had to convert from outdated and inefficient Translation Memory methods and begin to adopt a language processing technology similar to Wydner’s:

The type of processing (by batches) used by Systran is out of date and should be replaced by a more interactive processing method. This has been well understood by Systran’s current rival Weidner which in a very few years and despite the still rudimentary character of the translation in the majority of the language pairs offered has penetrated the market further than Systran. (G. Van Slype, 1983).

What Cost-effective means:

The problems of selecting the ‘best’ or most appropriate MT systems for a particular organization was another theme that came to prominence. A number of presentations on this topic included detailed costings and comparisons of the options available at the time (e.g. Isabella Moore in 1988). In truth, the range was then much narrower than today. For most, Systran and Logos were economically out of the question. For many years, the only real option was one of the systems from Weidner. (John Hutchins, 1998)

In a 1980 evaluation Ian Pigott considered that the quality of the Weidner Spanish-English system” [which was the only “system” produced by our original Team] “was comparable to that of Systran French-English” … [which is important information in relation to “Cost-effectiveness,” since the computer that I did that Program on was a DEC PDP 11/34, which was a rather inexpensive mini-computer, while the competitor (Systran) program needed a very expensive, huge Main Frame Computer for it to be able to operate] “(Van Slype 1983). Nevertheless, post-editing time was a third of the time required for full human translation of the same text, and so there were considerable benefits. (Jonathan Slocum, 1984), (Bruce Wydner, 2007)

Translation Associates and Eyring Research Institute

The Company responsible for the production of the Weidner 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., a 501(c)3 Corporation, dba Translation Associates.

Bruce Wydner (who legally had his last name changed to be pronounced properly), representing his company, made an exclusive marketing contract with his brother Stephen Weidner, the contract restricted the transfer of any development rights to his brother's company, and Bruce Wydner made a 15 year non-compete non-circumvent contract with Eyring Research Institute in Provo, Utah to engage their computing services in the creation of the Weidner Multi-lingual Word Processor, and for the programming skills of Eyring's bi-lingual programmer employee Bruce Bastian, Bruce Wydner paid Eyring Research Institute $25.00/hr for programming time of which $5.00/hr went to pay Bastian.

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. (Cleo Harmon, 1999)

Machine Translation

In 1982 Stephen Weidner began to have financial problems over a Research and Development Tax Shelter he had created, as a result Weidner Communications Inc. suffered, disputes over Weidner's assets were taken to court. In 1984 Stephen Weidner's original Company was purchased by Bravis International, one of Japan’s largest translation companies, as part of a settlement of the court ordered liquidation of Weidner Communication’s assets, but Weidner Communications Inc. 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. (Margaret M. Perscheid, 1985) Later the Japanese sold Wydner’s technology to Intergraph Corporation of Alabama who later sold it to Transparent Language, Inc. of New Hampshire.

It is interesting to note that Bruce Wydner, the Principle Agent for the Inns of the Temple Inc., that retained the research and development rights to the Weidner Multi-lingual Word Processor, separated himself from his brother in early 1979 and no longer supplied any updated software developments. Weidner had offended his brother over a matter of having Eyring Research Institute send their bi-lingual employee to remove Wydners intellectual property from his home, of which Wydner claims was stolen from him. (Wydner vs Novell, WordPerfect, Ashton, Bastan, et. all, 2003)

DL International, Enterprise Translation Server

The Weidner Engine is the basis of freetranslation.com [http://www.freetranslation.com] 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. (Michael Quinlan, March 8, 2000).

The original Weidner Engine was recently (2001) bought by SDL International of London, England.

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. (The Deseret News, Friday, Aug. 22, 1980.)

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 Bowne Global Solutions, Inc., which was later acquired by Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. and is demonstrated in their itranslator software. [http://itranslator.lionbridge.com/bgsx/BGSXeng_us-EntryPage.htm]

Word Processing

Microsoft Word

Lernout & Hauspie sold a copy of Wydner's language technology (The Siemens/Weidner Engine) aka Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products N.V. to the Microsoft Corporation to be used in Microsoft Word.

WordPerfect

Eyring Research Institute was a development bed 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 Spanish-English Multi-lingual Word Processor, a foundation to the Wordperfect Mono-lingual Word Processor, produced first for English then for Spanish. (Utah Weekly, 2003)

Ronald G. Hansen, the President of the Eyring Research Institute, reportedly asked Bruce Wydner the following in 1978: "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." (Utah Weekly, 2003)

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.

Intelligent Systems Technology (ARPA) and (SISTO)

Eyring Research Institute was instrumental 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. (Cleo Harmon, 1999)

Some historical comments from Bruce Wydner

The principal activity at BYU, in those years during the 1970s, was to try to accomplish L.D.S. Church President David O. McKay’s goal so that they would discover how to “Teach Computers to Understand Human Languages” so that the US Government could make the Services of the interlingual communications utility (the Internet) available to the People of the World, so that the LDS Church would also be able, over the developments of the Internet, to make it possible so that: “Every man shall hear the fullness of the Gospel in his own tongue.”

After being exposed to that environment at BYU for over five years, I finally realized that the Language Book that I had written, at Elder Gordon B. Hinckley’s behest, would accomplish with Human Languages what the BYU Program was trying to accomplish that they were not having success with. A little over a year after I first got that idea, my Explanation for how to Teach Computers to Understand English and Other Natural Languages was written up in the Wall Street Journal as the Invention that had accomplished that Worldwide Goal. (Geoffrey Kingscott, 1992)

References

ources

Natural Language Computing: The commercial applications, Tim Johnson, Published by Ovum Ltd, London, 1985 ISBN 090396922X

BETTER TRANSLATION FOR BETTER COMMUNICATION A survey of the translation market, present and future, prepared for the Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General Information Market and Innovation by Bureau Marcel van Dijk, Brussels PA Conseiller de Direction, Paris, Authors G. Van Slype (Bureau Marcel van Dijk) J. F. Guinet (PA) F. Seitz (PA) E. Benegam (PACTEL) 1983 ECSC, EEC EAEC Luxembourg, ISBN 0-08-03053402, EUR 7720EN,

A lunch with Bruce Wydner, Geoffrey Kingscott, Language International, John Benjamins Publishing Co., Amsterdam - The Netherlands, 4/4, April, 1992

The Life of Frank Carlyle Harmon (1905-1997), Compiled by his wife, Cleo Harman Edited by Bliss J. Hansen, Published by Family Footprints, 1999, p. 150 ASIN: B000I8VR9C

California Firm to Unveil a Computer That Processes Words for Translators, Richard A. Shaffer, Wall Street Journal, October 24, 1978

Provo researchers help perfect a computer-translator, Arnold Irving, The Deseret News, Oct. 31, 1978

Germans visit Utah to see language translation unit, Richard Nash, The Deseret News, Aug. 21, 1980

Machine Translation: its History, Current Status, and Future Prospects, Jonathan Slocum, Siemens Communications Systems, Inc., Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1984, http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/P/P84/P84-1116.pdf

The Fastest Way to Learn Spanish is to See IT!, by Spanish New Learning Center, Hawkes Publishing Inc., 1975, ISBN 0890360839

Wydner vs Novell, WordPerfect, Ashton, Bastan, et. all, 2003

Twenty years of Translating and the Computer, John Hutchins, 1998 http://www.hutchinsweb.me.uk/Aslib-1998.pdf

Practical Experience of Machine Translation, Veronica Lawson, North Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1982

Machine Translation Today; The State of the Art, Margaret King, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland 1984

Machine Translation; Past, Present, Future, W. J. Hutchins, Ellis Norwood Limited, Chichester, England, 1986

Machine Translation, Ian Pigott, Commission of the European Communities, Luxemburg, XIII-84 IP, November 1991.

Language Software and Technology, Report by Michael Quinlan, President of Transparent Languages to LDS Church, New Hampshire, www.transparent.com, March 8, 2000

COMPUTER-AIDED TRANSLATION AT WCC, Margaret M. Perscheid, CALICO Journal, Volume 3 Number 1, https://calico.org/a-273-ComputerAided%20Translation%20At%20WCC.html

Analyse des Systems zur computergestützten Übersetzung Weidner – Version Französisch-Englisch 2.5, http://www.dialog-translations.com/bilder/Diplomarbeit%20Hans%20Christian%20von%20Steuber.pdf

Michael G. Hundt: Working with the Weidner machine-aided translation system, in: Veronica Lawson (Hg): Translating and the computer 4 - Practical experience with machine translation, London, 1982

Trial of the Weidner computer-assisted translation system, Translation Bureau Canada, Project No. 5-5462, 1985

Wydner Invention Fulfills "Prophecy" of LDS "Mormon" Church Presidents, by US-Oregon Observer staff Special to the Utah Weekly, The Utah Weekly, Thursday, March 27, 2003, Vol. 2, Num. 4

WCC's translation bureau, Henrietta Pons, Veronica Lawson 1982

Ulla Magnusson-Murray: Operational experience of a machine translation service, in Veronica Lawson (Hg): Translating and the computer 5 - Tools for the trade, London 1983, S.171-180; Tim Johnson ebd:283-286

Machine Translation: its History, Current Status, and Future Prospects, Jonathan Slocum, Siemens Communications Systems, Inc., Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas