The rapid development of natural language processing in the last three decades has drastically changed the way professional translators do their work. Nowadays most of them use computer-assisted translation (CAT) or translation memory (TM) tools whose evolution has been overshadowed by the much more sensational development of machine translation (MT) systems, with which TM tools are sometimes confused. These two language technologies now interact in mutually enhancing ways, and their increasing role in human translation has become a subject of behavioral studies. Philosophers and linguists, however, have been slow in coming to grips with these important developments. The present paper seeks to fill in this lacuna. I focus on the semantic aspects of the highly distributed human–computer interaction in the CAT process which presents an interesting case of an extended cognitive system involving a human translator, a TM tool, an MT engine, and sometimes other human translators or editors. Considered as a whole, such a system is engaged in representing the linguistic meaning of the source document in the target language. But the roles played by its various components, natural as well as artificial, are far from trivial, and the division of linguistic labor between them throws new light on the familiar notions that were initially inspired by rather different phenomena in the philosophy of language, mind, and cognitive science.

中文翻译：

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译者的扩展心智

自然语言处理在过去三年中的快速发展彻底改变了专业翻译人员的工作方式。如今，他们中的大多数人使用计算机辅助翻译 (CAT) 或翻译记忆库 (TM) 工具，这些工具的演变已经被机器翻译 (MT) 系统的轰动性发展所掩盖，而 TM 工具有时会与之混淆。这两种语言技术现在以相互增强的方式相互作用，它们在人类翻译中越来越重要的作用已成为行为研究的主题。然而，哲学家和语言学家在掌握这些重要发展方面进展缓慢。本文试图填补这一空白。我专注于 CAT 过程中高度分布式人机交互的语义方面，它展示了一个有趣的扩展认知系统案例，涉及人类翻译、TM 工具、MT 引擎，有时还包括其他人类翻译或编辑。从整体上看，这样的系统致力于用目标语言表示源文档的语言含义。但是它的各种组成部分所扮演的角色，自然的和人工的，远非微不足道的，它们之间的语言分工为熟悉的概念提供了新的思路，这些概念最初是由语言哲学中相当不同的现象启发的，心灵，和认知科学。从整体上看，这样的系统致力于用目标语言表示源文档的语言含义。但是它的各种组成部分所扮演的角色，自然的和人工的，远非微不足道的，它们之间的语言分工为熟悉的概念提供了新的思路，这些概念最初是由语言哲学中相当不同的现象启发的，心灵，和认知科学。从整体上看，这样的系统致力于用目标语言表示源文档的语言含义。但是它的各种组成部分所扮演的角色，自然的和人工的，远非微不足道的，它们之间的语言分工为熟悉的概念提供了新的思路，这些概念最初是由语言哲学中相当不同的现象启发的，心灵，和认知科学。