Dr. Michael S. Blekhman, PhD (Linguistics)
Deceased may 2022.

 

Director: Lingvistica b.v., Dongen, The Netherlands.

Member of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas.

E-mail: ed@semanta.nl

 

Experience and Occupation:

Linguistics & Computers: language resources; machine translation, machine-aided translation; automatic abstracting & indexing; computer-based library and retrieval systems; computer-assisted lexicography.

 

Research methods used:

 

q       statistical: creating and using frequency dictionaries; statistical methods in automatic indexing;

q       example-based -  example-based topic recognition;

q       rule-based – creating commercial rule-based MT systems.

Teaching languages (traditional and computer-aided education): English grammar; English as a second language; Russian as a second language; Ukrainian as a second language.

 

Translating: English to and from Russian and Ukrainian.

 

Language proficiency: Russian, Ukrainian (both native); English (fluent); German, Spanish, Polish, French (reading).

CURRICULUM VITAE

1. Major events and occupations

 

1951. Born in Kharkov, Ukraine. December 27. Father: physician; Mother: lawyer.

1959-1969. Secondary education.

1969-1974.Kharkov State University, Philological Faculty, Dept. of Mathematical and Applied Linguistics.

1974. Graduated from the University.  Specialty:  automatic  text  processing; technical translation.

1974-1976. Engineer (programmer), Software dept., GosavtotransNIIProyekt Research Institute, Voroshilovgrad.

 1975. Married. Wife: Nadezhda Bezhanova.

 1976. Born daughter, Olga.

 1976. English teacher, Voroshilovgrad Teachers' Training College.

 1976-1989. Engineer, senior engineer, researcher, senior researcher, Information  Dept.,  VNIITElektromash  Research  Institute,  Kharkov.  Specialization:

     1976-1979: translator (English, German, Polish, Spanish, Slovak into Russian);

     1979-1989: development and implementation of automatic text processing systems: information storage and retrieval; automatic abstracting and  indexing;  machine translation.

 1982. Born daughter, Marina.

 1985. Defended dissertation at the Leningrad State University. Topic: Category of Definiteness and Automatic Processing of English Discourse.

 1986. Conferred PhD degree in linguistics.

 1989-1990. Leading researcher, ESCORT Innovation Center. Specialization: electronic dictionaries; machine-aided translation  systems.

 1989-1990. Lecturer, Kharkov State University, Dept. of Mathematical and Applied Linguistics. Courses: local information retrieval systems; machine-aided translation.

 1990-1993. Leading researcher; deputy director, MEDICOM Ltd.  Specialization: machine translation; machine-aided   translation; electronic dictionaries.

 1993-present. President, Lingvistica '93 Company.  Specialization: machine translation; machine-aided translation; electronic dictionaries.

 1994-1998. Head of the Laboratory for Machine Translation, Kharkov  State Polytechnic University.

 1994-1998. Senior lecturer, Kharkov State Polytechnic University. Courses: computational linguistics & machine translation; retrieval systems; modeling natural language in intelligent systems.

1998-present. President, director: Lingvistica, Lingvistica b.v., Lingvistica ’98 Inc. Specialization: linguistic resources; dictionaries,  MT and MAT systems; language engineering; software localization (English to Russian and Ukrainian), language learning software.

2. Courses taught

 

1)       English grammar.  Voroshilovgrad  Teachers'  Training  College.  1975-1976.

2)       Spoken English for Children. Secondary school No 49, Kharkov.  1987-1988.

3)       Local Information Retrieval Systems. Kharkov State University. 1989.

4)       Machine-Aided Translation. Kharkov State University. 1990.

5)       Information Storage and Retrieval. A school for information workers. Escort Innovation Center & Kharkov State University. 1990.

6)       Using professional machine translation and machine-aided translation software for teaching English at secondary schools in Ukraine. A seminar for English teachers. Kharkov State Pedagogical University. 1992-1998.

7)       Computational linguistics & Machine translation. Kharkov State Polytechnic University. 1994-1998.

8)       Retrieval systems. Kharkov  State Polytechnic University. 1996-1998.

9)       Modeling natural language in intelligent systems. Kharkov State Polytechnic University. 1996-1998.

10)    The Russian language. Whytelord Linguistics Corporation, Inc. Montreal, Canada. 2000-present.

11)    English grammar. Extramural English course in Russian-speaking  newspapers. Montreal, Canada. 2000-present.

        

3. Research projects headed

 

n       A local information retrieval system with automatic topic recognition and indexing.   VNIITElektromash, 1979-1989.

n       An automatic abstracting system for English scientific texts. VNIITElektromash. 1977-1985.

n       An automatic abstracting routine as  part  of  an  integrated information  processing  system  for   processing English  data bases. VNIITElektromash, NIIAP & Leningrad Teachers' Training College. 1985.

n       PARS 1.00: an English-Russian machine translation system. VNIITElektromash & VNIIOMSHS. 1986-1987.

n       IRIPARS: An  integrated  machine  translation  and  retrieval  system for processing data bases. VNIIOMSHS, Medical  Information Center of The Republic of Georgia & Medicom Ltd. 1987-1990.

n       CARS: a machine-aided translation system  for the English  &  Russian language pair. Escort Innovation Center &  Kharkov  University. 1989.

n       PARS 2.00: an  English-Russian  and  Russian-English  machine translation system. Kharkov University & Medicom Ltd.  1989-1991.

n       PARS  2.01  through  2.04  -  Medicom  Ltd.  1991-1993.

n       RUMP: - A  Russian-Ukrainian bidirectional MT system. Medicom Ltd. 1990-1993.

n       GEISHA: A computer-based translation system  between  Japanese and Russian. Medicom Ltd. 1990-1991.

n       GALA: A machine-aided translation system between  Spanish and Russian. CHETEK Joint-Stock Co. & KWAZAR Co. 1992.

n       RDT: Translator's  tools  for  Ukrainian,  English, Russian, German, and Spanish. Medicom Ltd. 1992-1993.

n       Implementation of professional machine translation and machine-aided translation systems in English and  German teaching processes at secondary schools in Ukraine. 1992-1993.

n       PARS, PARS/U: A package of two-way machine translation systems for Russian, Ukrainian, and English, with automatic grammatical encoding of Slavic words. Lingvistica '93 Co. 1993-present.

n       English-Russian Programming Dictionary. Medicom Ltd. 1993-1994.

n       Implementation of professional English- and Ukrainian-based machine translation and machine-aided translation systems in the extra-school studies at Palaces of Children in Ukraine. Lingvistica '93 Co. & Central Ukrainian Palace of Children. 1993-1998.

n       PARS/D: A German-Russian machine translation system. Lingvistica '93 Co. 1994-present.

n       PARS/DU: A German-Ukrainian machine translation system. Lingvistica '93 Co. 1998.

n       PG-PARS: A Dictionary support system for English, Russian, and Ukrainian. Lingvistica ’93 Co. 1996-1999.

n       EleGloss Voice – an EnglishóRussian dictionary with a voice feature. Lingvistica ’98 Inc. 2002-2004.

n       Grammatical dictionaries for Russian and Ukrainian. Lingvistica ’93 Co. Lingvistica ’98 Inc.1996-present.

n       Interlingua-based MT systems. Language Force, Ca. Lingvistica ’98 Inc. 1998-1999.

n       Developing Ukrainian-English, Russian-English dictionaries. SYSTRAN, USA. 1998-1999.

n       NorT: A Norwegian-English MT system. For Clue International, Norway. Lingvistica ’98 Inc. 1999.

n       Language-learning software: Ukrainian, English, Russian, German. Lingvistica ’98 Inc., Lingvistica b.v.

n       1999-present.

n       Lexical-phonetic Polish dictionary. France Telecom. 2000-2001.

n       Proper names dictionaries and software (European and Asian languages). For NMSU CRL, USA. Lingvistica ’98 Inc. 1999-2003.

n       Internet mining software and onomastica dictionaries. For NMSU CRL, USA. Lingvistica ’98 Inc. 1999-2003.

n       Computer-aided translation and proofing tools. For Universal Translation Inc., USA. 2001-present.

n       Speech recognition and synthesis project. Lingvistica ’98 Inc., Lingvistica b.v. 2001-present.

n       Internet searching engines: theoretical prolegomena. Lingvistica ’98 Inc., Lingvistica b.v. 2001-present.

n       MT systems for Polish and Dutch. Lingvistica ’98 Inc., Lingvistica b.v. 2001-present.

n       Language learning software: Dad’s Lessons, Talking Kozak, Phrasebooks: Lingvistica ’98 Inc. 2000-present.

n       Creating linguistic resources: 1993-present. Dozens of languages and resource types involved.

 

4. Translations

 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by  Lewis Carroll. Translation into Russian. 1983-2004.              

5. Major interests and priorities

 

1.     My family.

2.     Professional activities: developing new computer-based language-oriented systems; training linguists and computer specialists; reporting at scientific conferences; writing papers and books.

3.     Religion; philosophy; politics.

4.     Friends.

5.     Watching sports events: European football; ice hockey.

6.     Recreation: swimming; walking.

7.     Newspapers; books; music.

PUBLICATIONS

In all, over 100: books, papers, contributions to conferences, in English, Russian, and Ukrainian.