MACHINE TRANSLATION

A computer natural language translation system inputs source language text and outputs target language text. The target language text is generated from the source language text using stored translation data generated from examples of source and corresponding target language texts. The stored translation data includes a plurality of translation components, each having surface data representative of the order of occurrence of language units in the component; dependency data related to the semantic relationship between language units in the component; and link data linking dependency data of language components of the source language with corresponding dependency data of language components of the target language. The surface data of the source language is used in analyzing the source language text, and the surface date of the target language is used in generating the target language text. The dependency data and link data is used in transforming the analysis of the source text into an analysis for the target language.