Hitachi, Ltd.

Atsushi Okajima

Fumiyuki Yamano

Yoshihiko Nitta

Eri Okamoto

Eri Katagiri

Noriyuki Yamasaki

Yuichi Inaba

A machine translation system capable of performing translation at a high processing speed with improved disambiguation rate in the parsing by applying grammar rules in dependence on the domains to which texts to be translated belong, objects of the texts and rules of sentences in the same text. The machine-translation system for translating a first language to a second language uses a grammer memory for storing grammar rules of the first or second language and a main memory for storing a variety of information, wherein the grammar rules stored in the grammar memory are prepared in groups at least on the basis of the domains to which texts to be translated belong and individual parts in the text. The system includes apparatus for deciding which of the grammar rules stored in the grammar memory should be applied to a given input text, and apparatus for translating the individual parts of the input text by applying the grammar rules determined on the basis of the result of decision made by the deciding apparatus.

Method and system for language translation

A method and an apparatus for generating/maintaining automatically or interactively a lexicon for storing information of cooccurrence relations utilized for determining whether or not a sequence of words in a given sentence described in a natural language is semantically correct with the aid of a memory, a data processor and a textual sentence file. A hypothesized cooccurrence relation table for storing hypothesized cooccurrence relations each having a high probabliity of being a valid cooccurrence relation is prepared by consulting the file. A hypothesis for the cooccurrence relation is previously established on the basis of a cooccurrence relation pattern indicating a probably acceptable conjunction by consulting the hypothesized cooccurrence relation table. Subsequently, a corresponding actual cooccurrence relation is derived from the textual file by parsing the relevant textual sentence and is tested to determine whether the cooccurrence relation is valid or not with reference to predetermined threshold conditions. On the basis of the results of the test, the information of the cooccurrence relation is correspondingly modified. The present method and apparatus can be utilized in a natural language parsing system and a machine translation system.

Method and system for generating lexicon of cooccurrence relations in

A machine translation system for mechanically translating a first language into a second language which displays series of questions in the first language on a display screen of a display device. A user sequentially answers the questions for the translation system mainly in the first language. The translation system parses portions of the source sentence information answered by the user, and retrieves a dictionary film in the system on the basis of the results of parsing to make a composition in the second language. The user's answers may contain the second language. The interaction between the user and the translation system allows an original text in the first language to be composed and translated in the second language in the translation system.

Interactive foreign language translating method and apparatus

In a method of translating a text described by a first language into a text described by a second language, words/idioms appearing in the first language text are managed as data sorted in accordance with a predetermined order, in such a manner that individual identification numbers are provided to the words/idioms in accordance with the predetermined order of sorting while the same identification number is provided to the same word/idiom. Then, the identification numbers as well as character strings of the second language corresponding to the words/idioms of the first language are used to generate the second language text in which the identification numbers for the words/idioms of the first language corresponding to the character strings of the second language are added ahead of the respective character strings of the second language. When it is desired to replace some of the character strings in the second language text in editing the second language text, the incorporation of the identification numbers into the second language text makes it possible to check the matching in the first language text by means of the identification numbers, thereby preventing unnecessary or undersired replacement which may be produced if the edition is made on the basis of only the matching of the character strings in the second language text.

Method of translation between languages with information of original

A machine translation system comprises input means for inputting a sentence written in a natural language, processor for parsing the input sentence, a word dictionary memory referred to by the processor, and a memory for storing multiple-parts-of-speech disambiguating rules in the form of a table. The parts of speech of words capable of functioning as multiple parts of speech should be in the inputted sentence are determined in consideration of an array of the parts of speech by applying the multiple-parts-of-speech disambiguating rules. Additionally, rate of appearance of each part of speech which the word of the input sentence can function as is previously calculated, and the part of speech which can not be determined by consulting the disambiguating rule table is determined in dependence on whether the rate of appearance exceeds a predetermined threshold value.

Multiple-parts-of-speech disambiguating method and apparatus for machine

An automatic translation method between natural languages comprises assigning parts of speech to words/idioms of an input text sentence by looking up a lexicon storage. The input text sentence in the form of string of parts of speech is segmented into phrasal elements as minimum units having linguistic meaning to assign parts of speech to the respective elements. The sequence of phrasal parts of speech is converted to a string of syntatic roles to the respective phrasal elements and words/idioms. Patterns representing a sentence, a clause and a quasi-clause are detected from the sequence of syntatic roles to transform the input text sentence to a skeleton pattern represented by a combination of those patterns. The sequence of the simple sentence, clause and quasi-clause inherent to the input language which forms the skeleton pattern is transformed to a sequence inherent to the output language. The sequence of syntatic roles of the simple sentence, clause and quasi-clause inherent to the input language which forms the transformed skeleton pattern is transformed to a sequence inherent to the output language. Finally, target language equivalents are assigned to the transformed string of syntatic roles.

Method for automatic translation between natural languages

An input sentence described by a first natural language is sectioned into individual words. Parts of speech corresponding to the individual words are retrieved from a lexical word storage, whereby the input sentence is described by a corresponding string of the parts-of-speech as retrieved. A translation pattern table is previously prepared which defines correspondence between patterns of strings of parts-of-speech for the first natural language and those for a second natural language by which corresponding output sentence is to be described. By referring to the translation pattern table, the string of the parts-of-speech of the input sentence is transformed into a corresponding string of the parts-of-speech for the second natural language. The output sentence described by the second natural language is generated by sequencing target words in accordance with the sequential order of the parts of speech of the string pattern obtained after the transformation.

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Yokohama, Japan

Atsushi Okajima