The object of this theoretical inquiry is to examine the controversial issue of a fully automatic high quality translation (FAHQT) in the light of past and projected advances in linguistic theory and hardware/software capability. This first volume of a two-volume report discusses the requirements of translation and aspects of human and machine translation. Techniques involved in machine translation, i.e., hardware, software, and linguistics, are covered. Contributions of linguistics to machine translation and pertinent recent work in linguistics are also considered. Views of specialists concerning machine translation are presented along with the conclusions and recommendations of the report. An appendix includes relevant papers contributed by specialists on the topic of machine translation. Papers are also included in the second volume of the study. For Volume 2, see FL 002 937. (VM)