In this paper we discuss the design and development of an interlingua for a large-scale MT project. We also discuss how the resulting KANT interlingua constrains complexity, supports staged development, evolves in a balanced fashion, and seeks maximal coverage. We address issues such as granularity of the data representation, its specification, the types of information it encodes, and how it supports a modular system architecture. Our experience shows that through a careful, reasoned design and implementation effort, it is possible to achieve multilingual target-language generation for extensive technical domains.
Deryle W. Lonsdale, Alexander Franz, John R. R. Le