Obituary
W. John Hutchins, librarian and historian of machine translation
It is with deep sadness that I have just read that last January, 19,
2021, Dr. William John Hutchins passed away at the age of 81.
John, a linguist and information scientist, was born in St. Pancras,
London, on January 27, 1939. He graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in
French and German at the University of Nottingham in 1960 and obtained a
diploma in librarianship at University College London in 1962.
He worked as assistant librarian at Durham University (1962–1965) and at
the University of Sheffield (1965–1971), and then as assistant librarian
(1971–1980) and sub-librarian (1980–1998) at the University of East Anglia.
In 2000 he obtained his PhD degree at the University of East Anglia. In
addition to authoring numerous articles in journals and conferences
about machine translation since 1963, he is particularly well known for
the book An Introduction to Machine Translation (1992) which he
co-authored with Harold Somers.
John’s service to the machine translation community, most of it after
retirement, has been outstanding. After serving as editor of the UEA
Papers in Linguistics, (1976–1982), he was editor of MT News
International, the bulletin of the International Association for Machine
Translation (1992–1997), president of the European Association for
Machine Translation (EAMT, 1995–2004) and of the International
Association for Machine Translation (IAMT, 1999–2001), and editor of the
Compendium of Translation Software (1992–2012).
John leveraged his experience as a librarian and machine translation
scholar to become the librarian and the historian of the field of
machine translation. In the last few decades, he was the curator of one
of the best resources about machine translation, the Machine Translation
Archive. The service is temporarily offline but the IAMT is working hard
to host it again as soon as possible and has commissioned the
transformation and transfer of a large part of the information to the
ACL Anthology, some of which is already available there.
The International Association for Machine Translation has recognized
John’s dedication twice, first with the IAMT Award of Honour (2001) and
with a unique Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.
Harold (Harry) Somers, who was professor of Language Engineering at the
University of Manchester and editor of the journal Machine Translation,
says:
/"John was a truly great and important contributor to the field of
machine translation, in his own unique way. I was fortunate enough to
have him as a collaborator when we produced what was —I think— the first
genuine text book for students of MT. I like to think that students
found that book useful, even after the statistical MT revolution made a
good number of the chapters fairly quickly out of date. What perhaps
many did not realise is that John’s work on MT was entirely a labour of
love, a kind of hobby, all completed in his own spare time: his job as a
librarian did not include working on the MT Archive, nor I think did his
employers properly realise and reward his fantastic contribution to the
field. We were extremely fortunate to benefit from his skills: from a
scientific viewpoint he was an informed observer free of any of the
prejudices of the developer or researcher with his own theories and
approaches to push. I have been away from the field for a good few years
now, but working with John was certainly a highlight of my career, and I
am sure his memory will be honoured far into the future."/
Tony Clarke, treasurer of the EAMT for so many years, says:
/"I can only endorse all that has been already said about John and his
academic achievements. I was always struck by his warmth and humility
and his unassuming manner. Even though he was basically a fairly shy
person, once you got talking to him, he could really open up and even
surprise you with a joke or two. My wife, Susanne, used to talk to him
about England and had some really interesting conversations. I simply
remember John as a warm-hearted and pleasant companion whom I am blessed
and honoured to have known. May he rest In peace."//
/
Viggo Hansen, who has been part of EAMT for decades, as conference
organizer, secretary, and recently as co-opted counsellor to the EAMT
president adds:
/"I met John at the MT Summit in Luxembourg in 1995, when John was
elected EAMT president. I am not a linguist but a user (at that time one
of the few) using MT commercially. I had the pleasure to be the EAMT
secretary during John's nine years as EAMT President. When being with
John you were in good company. He was an extremely interesting person
and had a very broad range of interests. When we had talked enough about
MT we could always relax in a good talk about football."/
I met John in Exeter, in a workshop called MT 2000, which he had
organized, and then many other times during these years. It was always a
great pleasure to chat with such a nice, knowledgeable, and generous
man. The last time I spent some time with John was at his home in
Norwich, in 2017. He showed me how he planned to scan and catalogue
shelves and shelves of historical machine translation publications and
add them to the Archive. By the way, as my predecessor Andy Way points
out, as a Norwich City FC season ticket holder, John would have been
delighted to see the Canaries promoted again to the Premier League,
after winning the Championship last Saturday.
I feel hugely indebted to John Hutchins, and I think many of you in the
machine translation community do too. We will have to work together to
preserve and continue his work on our behalf.
/Sit ei terra levis./
Mikel L. Forcada
President of the European Association for Machine Translation
May 14, 2021
--
Mikel L. Forcada
Dept. de Llenguatges i Sistemes Informàtics
Edifici Politècnica IV,
Universitat d'Alacant
E-03690 Sant Vicent del Raspeig (Spain)
Phone: +34 96 590 9776
[email protected]
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