  This paper proposes the use of ``pattern-based'' context-free grammars as a
basis for building machine translation (MT) systems, which are now being
adopted as personal tools by a broad range of users in the cyberspace society.
We discuss major requirements for such tools, including easy customization for
diverse domains, the efficiency of the translation algorithm, and scalability
(incremental improvement in translation quality through user interaction), and
describe how our approach meets these requirements.
