Carnegie Group’s ClearCheck

CCommercially available controlled English software is still a rarity. But for how long?”

Pittsburgh software house Carnegie Group is offering its controlled English checker ClearCheck to the world. ClearCheck, which can be integrated within any SGML editor, performs syntactic parsing to detect such grammatical problems as ambiguity. It is not based on one particular flavor of controlled English, such as AECMA Simplified English (developed by the airline industry), but is customized for a domain, specific grammar. Carnegie Group does not offer ClearCheck as a plug,and’play product, but rather positions it as what vice president Bruce Russell calls a “semi,product” within the company’s line of products and services. By definition, ClearCheck needs to be customized for each application. Russell points out that implementing controlled English not only produces texts which are more digestible for MY systems but also texts which are easier for humans to translate. He adds that controlled English is also suitable for other applications besides translation, such as ensuring consistency across multiple authors and verifying the clarity of texts.
    Translation appears to getting a lot of attention at the Carnegie Group, but considering its long and intimate ties with the Center for Machine Translation at CMU that is not so surprising. Last year, the company formed a “cooperative alliance” with The Corporate Word, a Pittsburgh translation company with a strong ties with Eastern Europe. The aim of the alliance is to provide Corporate Word with access to the Carnegie Group’s advanced NLP technology, while providing the Carnegie Group with a window into the translation world. The two companies are also hatch, ing plans to develop and market translation software together.

While early NLP applications tended to evolve in luxurious isolation, the alliance between the two Pittsburgh companies is yet another example of the increasing importance being placed on the inclusion of existing and potential users in the development loop.
    In the translation world, IBM, Systran, Logos, and others are coming up with formulas for both fostering development and generating income by offering services. Carnegie Group, of course, is no stranger to building production systems; witness applications for Reuters and others. The Carnegie Group/CMU team are currently building an ambitious multilingual system for Caterpillar based on ClearCheck. Rather than tailoring the system to Caterpillar’s controlled English, it is the ClearCheck system itself which defines the controlled language.

Carnegie Group, Five PPG Place, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, USA; Tel: + 1 412 642 6900, Fax: + 1 412 642 6906