METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR TRANSLATING SENTENCES BETWEEN LANGUAGES

• US 20080086300A1
• Filed: 03/22/2007
• Published: 04/10/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ABBYY Development LLC
• Original Assignee: ABBYY Software
• Inventors: Zuev, Konstantin, Selegey, Vladimir, Anismovich, Konstantin
• Granted Patent: US 8,195,447 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/40 Processing or translation of natural language natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/56 Natural language generation

Abstract

A method and computer system for translating sentences between languages from an intermediate language-independent semantic representation is provided. On the basis of comprehensive understanding about languages and semantics, exhaustive linguistic descriptions are used to analyze sentences, to build syntactic structures and language independent semantic structures and representations, and to synthesize one or more sentences in a natural or artificial language. A computer system is also provided to analyze and synthesize various linguistic structures and to perform translation of a wide spectrum of various sentence types. As result, a generalized data structure, such as a semantic structure, is generated from a sentence of an input language and can be transformed into a natural sentence expressing its meaning correctly in an output language. The method and computer system can be applied to in automated abstracting, machine translation, natural language processing, control systems, Internet information retrieval, etc.

Claims

1. A method of representing the meaning of a source sentence from a source language, comprising:

obtaining a language-independent semantic structure to represent the meaning of the source sentence;

synthesizing a syntactic structure of the output sentence from the language-independent semantic structure using information which includes lexical descriptions, semantic descriptions, syntactic descriptions, and morphological descriptions of the output language; and

constructing an output sentence to represent the meaning of the source sentence in an output language.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a linear order and restoring movements on the syntactic structure of the output sentence.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

performing a morphological synthesis on the syntactic structure of the output sentence using morphological descriptions of the output language.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

performing a lexical selection on a language-independent semantic structure of the sentence using lexical descriptions and semantic descriptions in the output language.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein performing the lexical selection further comprises applying semantic structure correction rules to overcome asymmetries between the language-independent semantic structure and the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the morphological synthesis is performed on lexical meanings of constituent cores of the surface structure of the output sentence in the output language.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the output language comprises a natural language selected from the group consisting of English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Slovak, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Tatar, Hindi, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Swahili.

8. A method of generating a sentence in an output language, comprising:

performing a lexical selection on a language-independent semantic structure of the sentence using lexical descriptions and semantic descriptions in the output language;

building a syntactic structure of the output sentence from the language-independent semantic structure using syntactic descriptions and morphological descriptions of the output language;

performing a morphological synthesis on the syntactic structure of the output sentence using morphological descriptions of the output language; and

constructing the sentence in the output language.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

determining a linear order and restoring movements on the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein performing the lexical selection further comprises applying semantic structure correction rules to overcome asymmetries between the language-independent semantic structure and the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein the morphological synthesis is performed on lexical meanings of constituent cores of the surface structure of the output sentence in the output language.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein the output language comprises a natural language selected from the group consisting of English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Slovak, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Tatar, Hindi, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Swahili.

13. A method of generating a sentence in an output language from a language-independent semantic structure, comprising:

performing a lexical selection on the language-independent semantic structure of the sentence using lexical descriptions of the output language and semantic descriptions;

building a syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language from the language-independent semantic structure using syntactic descriptions and lexical descriptions of the output language;

determining a linear order and restoring movements on the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language;

performing a morphological synthesis on the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language using morphological descriptions of the output language; and

constructing the sentence in the output language.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein performing the lexical selection further comprises applying semantic structure correction rules to overcome asymmetries between the language-independent semantic structure and the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the output language comprises a natural language selected from the group consisting of English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Slovak, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Tatar, Hindi, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Swahili.

16. A computer readable medium comprising instructions for causing a computing system to carry out steps comprising:

performing a lexical selection on a language-independent semantic structure using lexical descriptions and semantic descriptions in the output language;

building a surface structure of the output sentence in the output language from the language-independent semantic structure using syntactic descriptions and lexical descriptions of the output language;

performing a morphological synthesis on the surface structure of the output sentence in the output language using morphological descriptions of the output language; and

constructing the sentence in the output language.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16, wherein the steps further comprising:

determining a linear order and restoring movements on the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 16, wherein performing the lexical selection further comprises applying semantic structure correction rules to overcome asymmetries between the language-independent semantic structure and the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 16, wherein the output language comprises a natural language selected from the group consisting of English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Slovak, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Tatar, Hindi, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Swahili.

20. A computer readable medium comprising instructions for causing a computing system to carry out steps for translating a sentence from a source language into an output language, comprising:

analyzing a language-independent semantic structure for the sentence;

performing a lexical selection on the language-independent semantic structure of the sentence using lexical descriptions and semantic descriptions in the output language;

building a surface structure of the output sentence in the output language from the language-independent semantic structure using syntactic descriptions and lexical descriptions of the output language;

determining a linear order and restoring movements on the syntactic structure of the output sentence in the output language;

performing a morphological synthesis on the surface structure of the output sentence in the output language using morphological descriptions of the output language; and

constructing the sentence in the output language.