Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing System

The Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing System was an early machine translation technology released in 1977 by Weidner Communications.

History

After its introduction to the market in 1977, the Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing System was reported in 1978 in the Wall Street Journal as "Quadrupling Translation Volume" and the Deseret News as "halving translation costs and of increasing output by at least 400 percent".^[1][2]

This new technology was demonstrated to translation experts on September 12, 1978, at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Thomas Bauman and Leland Wright of the American Translators Association arrived at the university on September 11, 1978, to view a demonstration of the system. After attending the demonstration, Bauman said he had "never been so converted to anything so fast in my life". He subsequently extended an invitation for Wydner to attend the annual meeting of the American Translators Association the following October.^[3]

Translation experts at the European Commission said that Wydner's new translation system "renewed [their] hope" for machine translation.^[4]

Machine translation

In 1982, Stephen Weidner began to have financial problems over a Research and Development Tax Shelter he had created, as a result Weidner Communications Inc. suffered, disputes over Weidner's assets were taken to court. In 1984 Stephen Weidner's original Company was purchased by Bravis International, one of Japan's largest translation companies, as part of a settlement of the court ordered liquidation of Weidner Communication's assets, but Weidner Communications Inc. still maintained offices in Chicago and in Paris. During the mid-1980s Weidner Communications, Inc., (WCC), was the largest translation company by sales volume in the United States.^[5]

Bruce Wydner, the principal agent for the Inns of the Temple Inc., that retained the research and development rights to the Weidner Multi-lingual Word Processor, separated himself from his brother in early 1979 and no longer supplied any updated software developments. Weidner had offended his brother over a matter of having Eyring Research Institute send their bi-lingual employee to remove Wydners intellectual property from his home, of which Wydner claims was stolen from him.^[6]

Lionbridge, iTranslator

A copy of the Weidner Multi-Lingual Word Processing software was requested by the German Government for the Siemens Corporation of Germany in September 1980 and was nicknamed the Siemens-Weidner Engine (originally English-German). This revolutionary multi-lingual word processing engine became foundational in the development of the Metal MT project according to John White of the Siemens Corporation.^[7]

The Siemens copy of the Weidner Multi-lingual Word Processing software has since been acquired through the purchase of assets of Lernout & Hauspie by Bowne Global Solutions, Inc., which was later acquired by Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. and is demonstrated in their iTranslator software.^[8]

WordPerfect

Eyring Research Institute was a development bed to Bruce Bastian (co-founder of WordPerfect) who was one of the original programmer helpers for Bruce Wydner in the production of the original Weidner Spanish-English Multi-lingual Word Processor, a foundation to the Wordperfect Mono-lingual Word Processor, produced first for English then for Spanish.^[9]

Ronald G. Hansen, the President of the Eyring Research Institute, reportedly asked Bruce Wydner the following in 1978: "Bruce Bastian says that this Multilingual Wordprocessor of yours has a lot more uses than just translating languages. He says that it could be used to produce monolingual word processors and wants to know if you will let him do that".^[9]