×

Method for constructing a knowledge base, knowledge base system, machine translation method and system therefor

  • US 5,267,156 A
  • Filed: 12/05/1991
  • Issued: 11/30/1993
  • Est. Priority Date: 12/05/1991
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
Patent Images

1. A method for constructing a knowledge base for responding to an input source-language word pattern that meets a translation pattern description and outputting a translation in a target language, from translation cases stored in a case base, by using a thesaurus describing hierarchies of words and concepts in the source language, comprising the steps of:

  • (a) searching the case base to find one or more translation cases using a selected translation pattern description, the selected translation pattern description having a source language pattern with source values, an associated target language pattern with target values, and links that relate respective source and target values, the translation pattern description being selected when the input-source language word pattern matches the source language pattern;

    (b) extracting one or more matching translation cases having words in the source language that meet one or more translation pattern description conditions and extracting a respective corresponding translation for the extracted translation cases, the extracted matching translation cases and corresponding translations being a set of translation pattern cases, the extracted matching translation cases having the words in the source language as source values and the corresponding translations having a target value determined by a translation of their respective source values;

    (c) generating a partial thesaurus for one or more translation pattern cases in the set of translation pattern cases, the partial thesaurus created by extracting parts of a thesaurus that contain the source values and hypernyms of the source values and obtaining for each of said source values and hypernyms a corresponding translation, the source value and corresponding translation comprising a pair, the pair and a corresponding frequency of occurrence of the pair comprising a word node in a hierarchy of word nodes in the partial thesaurus;

    (d) computing an importance value of a translation for each word node contained in said partial thesaurus on the basis of said frequency of the word node; and

    (e) determining whether to convert a word contained in a translation pattern case into a hypernym in said partial thesaurus by using the importance value of a corresponding translation computed for the hypernym, and, if possible, converting the word into the hypernym in order to generalize said translation pattern case.

View all claims
  • 2 Assignments
Timeline View
Assignment View
    ×
    ×