Machine translation in natural language application development

• US 20070282594A1
• Filed: 06/02/2006
• Published: 12/06/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/02/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Spina, Michelle S.
• Application Number:
  US11/445,798
• Publication Number:
  US 20070282594A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation

Abstract

Machine translation architecture for natural language application development. The architecture facilitates automatic translation of developed training datasets into a full set of desired target languages. Additionally, select ones of the training data can be tagged and utilized as a test dataset for testing performance. Accordingly, only a single input dataset is utilized, and from which all other datasets are created via machine translation. The architecture includes a first dataset of natural language data in a first human language which can be automatically translated via a machine translation component into at least a second dataset in a second human language. In one aspect, the data of the input dataset is then replaced by the translated data output from the machine translation engine to form the final dataset in a different language.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented system that facilitates generation of multi-language natural language datasets in a natural language application development environment, comprising:

in the development environment, a first dataset of natural language data in a first human language; and

a machine translation component of the development environment that automatically translates the first dataset into at least a second dataset in a second human language.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the first dataset includes at least one of natural language training data or natural language test data.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising a tagging component that tags training data of the first dataset for utilization as test data in testing the second dataset.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the first and second datasets include expressions understandable as natural language expressions.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising an automatic speech recognition engine having a statistical model that is trained on the first dataset.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising a selection component that facilitates selection of two or more human languages of a language component into which the first dataset will be translated.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the machine translation component automatically translates the first dataset into the second human language and at least one other different human language.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the machine translation component facilitates translation of at least one of speech input or text input.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising an import component that facilitates importation of content information via different file formats.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising a replacement component that facilitates replacement of content information of the first dataset with translated data.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising a machine learning and reasoning component that employs a probabilistic and/or statistical-based analysis to prognose or infer an action that a user desires to be automatically performed.

12. A computer-implemented method of generating multi-language natural language datasets for software application development, comprising:

developing training data from within an authoring tool in a first human language as part of a first natural language dataset;

translating a subset of the first natural language dataset into multiple different natural language datasets via a machine translation process; and

employing the multiple different natural language datasets in an application.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the authoring tool facilitates development of a speech-related application.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising selecting multiple output languages into which the first natural language dataset is to be translated.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising automatically performing translating the subset of the first natural language dataset into multiple different natural language datasets in response to selecting the multiple output languages.

16. The method of claim 12, further comprising importing into the training data transcribed data associated with a speech-related application.

17. The method of claim 12, wherein the subset of the natural language dataset is a response container that is translated during translating of the subset.

18. The method of claim 12, wherein translating of the subset selects only example data associated with a response node.

19. The method of claim 12, further comprising tagging an example utterance of a response node for utilization as test data.

20. A computer-executable system for application development, the system comprising:

computer-implemented means for inputting data in a first human language as part of a first natural language training dataset;

computer-implemented means for translating a subset of the first natural language training dataset into datasets of multiple different languages via a machine translation process; and

computer-implemented means for replacing data in the first natural language training dataset with corresponding translated data of one of the datasets of the multiple different languages.