The first main contributions of the Group were on contrastive computational lexica, (hence the original meaning of the acronym DIMA: "DIzionario MAcchina", i.e. machine dictionaries) by producing terminological dictionaries in two or more languages, supported by degree dissertations at the Education Faculty- University of Turin. Gradually, the activity of the Group extended to syntax and semantics, with special reference to their application to Machine Translation and Natural Language Processing. In 1985 Gruppo DIMA implemented for Olivetti s.p.a. (described on Olivetti Research & Technology Review) an interactive analyser for Italian language, running on a Personal Computer.

Above all, from the beginning Gruppo DIMA contributed to the project EUROTRA for multilingual machine translation sponsored by European Community and its member States. In this connection, the group produced the Italian modules of the system in collaboration with the Computational Linguistics Institute(ILC) of CNR and the University of Pisa. Moreover, some members of the association represented Italy in international teams coordinating the project's scientific work.