The work to be presented here concerns the ordering of alternatives in the Multra Machine Translation System. The Multra MT system is a fundamental part of the Multra prototype, modeling a translation work bench with user-controlled mixed mode of mechanical and human translation. The Multra system is based on transfer and unification. It includes three main modules, responsible for analysis, transfer, and generation, respectively. In addition, there is a separate preference module ordering the

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... nalysis alternatives before passing them on to the transfer component. Preferences are expressed by means of linguistic rules defined over feature structures. Alternative transfer rules are applied according to specificity; a specific rule takes precedence over a more general one. The specificity principle also governs the application of generation rules. The MT system as a whole, as well as its separate modules, can be tuned to present the best alternative only, or the complete set of alternatives in the preferred order. In tro d u ctio n