This introductory text to statistical machine translation (SMT) provides all of the theories and methods needed to build a statistical machine translator, such as Google Language Tools and Babelfish. In general, statistical techniques allow automatic translation systems to be built quickly for any language-pair using only translated texts and generic software. With increasing globalization, statistical machine translation will be central to communication and commerce. Based on courses and tutorials, and classroom-tested globally, it is ideal for instruction or self-study, for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in computer science and/or computational linguistics, and researchers in natural language processing. The companion website provides open-source corpora and tool-kits.
