PC BASED DICTIONARY OF PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING 
Stilla Dunkel, inpho GmbH, D - 70174 Stuttgart, Germany 
Karlheinz Güthner, ABAKUS GmbH, D - 88250 Weingarten, Germany 
Jürgen Peipe, Universitát der Bundeswehr München, D - 85577 Neubiberg, Germany 
Commission VI, Working Group 3 
KEY WORDS: Terminology, Computer, Software, Machine Translation, PC Based Dictionary 
ABSTRACT 
Machine translation is a useful tool to generate draft translations of photogrammetric texts provided that subject- 
specific (photogrammetric) terms are included in the dictionary of the translation system. In the paper, the building of 
a microdictionary for photogrammetry and remote sensing within the Globalink translation software is outlined. 
KURZFASSUNG 
Automatische Übersetzung kann zur Herstellung von Rohübersetzungen photogrammetrischer Texte eingesetzt 
werden, vorausgesetzt daß die fachspezifischen (photogrammetrischen) Begriffe im Wörterbuch des Über- 
setzungssystems enthalten sind. In diesem Bericht wird ein Überblick über die Generierung eines Wörterbuchs für 
Photogrammetrie und Fernerkundung innerhalb des Globalink Übersetzungssystems gegeben. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Machine translation of photogrammetric texts from the 
English into the German language and vice versa can 
be accomplished by means of a PC based translation 
system suggested by the authors a few years ago 
(Güthner and Peipe, 1993). The Globalink translation 
software is the core of the system (Globalink, 1990). 
The automatic features of the program support the 
human interpreter and may increase his productivity. 
Literary masterpieces are not appropriate to automatic 
translation, of course, but precisely formulated technical 
documents lead to satisfactory draft translations 
representing the general meaning of the text in the 
target language. The software offers a comprehensive 
text analysis according to syntax and grammar instead 
of a simple word-by-word transfer. In the interactive 
mode, the text is translated sentence by sentence. Two 
windows are displayed on the PC monitor showing the 
text in both languages. The user is able to modify the 
source and the target text on-line to produce an 
optimized target document (see examples given in 
Güthner and Peipe, 1993). 
Essential part of the software are dictionaries as lexical 
databases. A general dictionary includes approximately 
65000 terms. Subject-specific user-defined micro- 
dictionaries can be added to improve substantially the 
quality of translation. Such a microdictionary contains 
the terminology of a special subject area, e.g. 
photogrammetry and remote sensing. If a term exists in 
both the general dictionary and a microdictionary, the 
subject-specific term has priority. All the dictionaries 
provide two sections, a single word data base and a 
semantic unit data base. Word implies the vocable itself 
and its grammatical form (gender, inflection, part of 
speech etc.). Semantic units are phrases consisting of a 
sequence of single words. They correspond to semantic 
units in the target language and must not be translated 
word-for-word. 
Building and enhancing the dictionaries is crucial to 
obtain a satisfactory quality of translation. In the 
Globalink software, the dictionaries can be modified 
using an update program which enables the user to 
check, add, change and eliminate terms. As an 
important part of the procedure, the grammatical 
function of any term is entered in coded form (e.g. part 
of speech, gender, tense, singularity or plurality of a 
term, etc.). When a noun or verb is to be added, 
information can be necessary to create correct inflection 
codes (Sect. 2). 
In this paper, the generation of a microdictionary of 
photogrammetry and remote sensing is outlined. The 
product can be used within the Globalink translation 
system. 
2. A MICRODICTIONARY OF PHOTOGRAMMETRY 
AND REMOTE SENSING 
To give an impression of the building and the content of 
the microdictionary, the input of nouns, verbs and 
semantic units is briefly described in Sect. 2.1 to 2.3. 
The terms have to be entered in both the English and 
the German dictionary because the dictionaries are 
monolingual and separate from one another. The 
connection between the source dictionary (e.g. 
German) and the target dictionary (e.g. English) is 
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International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B6. Vienna 1996