--- title: "Pierre Isabelle — papers and cards" description: "Pierre Isabelle: 3 paper cards in the Research library (1986–2017), with what each paper is about, the ideas Mova took from it, and the co-authors." canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/pierre-isabelle/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/pierre-isabelle/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / Pierre Isabelle # Pierre Isabelle 3 paper cards in the Research library · 1986–2017 Pierre Isabelle wrote 3 of the papers Mova reads, in 1986–2017, most of them on [Machine translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/machine-translation/); often with [Colin Cherry](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/colin-cherry/), Elliott Macklovitch, [George Foster](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-foster/). [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5109464669) · [**h-index 18**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5109464669) · [3444 citations](https://openalex.org/authors/A5109464669) · [47 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5109464669) — openalex-snapshot, 2026-10-14 The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=Pierre+Isabelle) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Pierre+Isabelle) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Pierre+Isabelle) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Pierre+Isabelle) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/orcid-search/search?searchQuery=Pierre+Isabelle) Topics: [Machine translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/machine-translation/) 3 ## Papers 1. **[A Challenge Set Approach to Evaluating Machine Translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/isabelle-2017-challenge-set-approach-evaluating-machine/)** *(2017)* The paper proposes challenge sets: small, hand-written sets of English to French sentences, each built to test one structural divergence between the two languages, for example morphology that exposes agreement, stranded prepositions, double-object verbs, subcategorisation frames, idioms and WH-movement. 2. **[Towards Reversible MT Systems](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/isabelle-1989-reversible-mt-systems/)** *(1989)* The paper argues that translation competence is a relation between sets of source and target texts, and that most MT systems define only a one-way procedure, which hides the conditions of the relation. 3. **[Transfer and MT Modularity](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/isabelle-1986-transfer-mt-modularity/)** *(1986)* The authors argue that second-generation rule-based MT systems break their own modularity rule: their transfer components hold target-language facts, such as the strict subcategorisation of the French verbs savoir and connaître, and their synthesis components are weak because transfer has already done the work. ## Co-authors (3) - [Colin Cherry](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/colin-cherry/) - Elliott Macklovitch - [George Foster](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-foster/) ## More papers in the library (1) Pages of the Research library: our summary, the ideas, references and who cites each. - [Using cognates to align sentences in bilingual corpora](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/simard-1992-cognates-align-sentences-bilingual-corpora/) — Michel Simard, George F. Foster, Pierre Isabelle · 1992