The topic of the book is the art or science of Automatic Translation, or Machine Translation (MT) as it is generally known – the attempt to automate all, or part of the process of translating from one human language into another. The aim of the book is to introduce this topic to the general reader – anyone interested in human language, translation or computers. The idea is to give the reader a basic understanding of the state of the art, both in terms of what is currently possible, and how it is achieved, and of what developments are on the horizon.