Twisted pair grammar: support for rapid development of machine translation for low density languages

Douglas Jones, Rick Havrilla


Abstract
We describe a streamlined knowledge acquisition method for semi-automatically constructing knowledge bases for a Knowledge Based Machine Translation (KBMT) system. This method forms the basis of a very simple Java-based user interface that enables a language expert to build lexical and syntactic transfer knowledge bases without extensive specialized training as an MT system builder. Following [Wu 1997], we assume that the permutation of binary-branching structures is a sufficient reordering mechanism for MT. Our syntactic knowledge is based on a novel, highly constrained grammar construction environment in which the only re-ordering mechanism is the permutation of binary-branching structures (Twisted Pair Grammar). We describe preliminary results for several fully implemented components of a Hindi/Urdu to English MT prototype being built with this interface.
Anthology ID:
1998.amta-papers.28
Volume:
Proceedings of the Third Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas: Technical Papers
Month:
October 28-31
Year:
1998
Address:
Langhorne, PA, USA
Editors:
David Farwell, Laurie Gerber, Eduard Hovy
Venue:
AMTA
SIG:
Publisher:
Springer
Note:
Pages:
318–332
Language:
URL:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-49478-2_29
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Douglas Jones and Rick Havrilla. 1998. Twisted pair grammar: support for rapid development of machine translation for low density languages. In Proceedings of the Third Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas: Technical Papers, pages 318–332, Langhorne, PA, USA. Springer.
Cite (Informal):
Twisted pair grammar: support for rapid development of machine translation for low density languages (Jones & Havrilla, AMTA 1998)
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PDF:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-49478-2_29