Introduction      

If translation is not just about written languages it is also not about human beings alone. Recent advances in technology especially computer technology, have made it possible to have machines involved in the process. Translation, as we have seen, is perhaps as ancient as the activity of writing itself. However, the idea of getting this also done by machines is very recent. The fast pace of life necessitated the invention of machines that could take over a range of activities, one of which was also translation. According to Harold L. Somers, the idea of mechanized translation goes back to the 17th century, but it can be precisely dated as 1933 (“Machine Translation”, 140). This was the year when patents were given to two scientists – the Russian Petr Smirnov-Troyanskii and the Armenian French Georges Artsrouni to work on their ideas for a machine that could undertake translation. However, the eventual invention of mechanized translation was the offshoot of research related to defence matters after the World War II. The invention of the electronic computer after World War II, which was initially used to calculate ballistic firing tables and in code-breaking, helped a great deal in furthering this idea. The credit for pioneering machine translation is usually given to Warren Weaver of the US. He is called the founding father of Machine Translation (MT).