Integrated and authoring and translation system

• US 6,658,627 B1
• Filed: 09/08/1999
• Issued: 12/02/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 09/04/1992
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Caterpillar Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Caterpillar Incorporated
• Inventors: Hayes, Philip J., Mitamura, Teruko, Nyberg, Eric H. III, Andersen, Peggy M., Gallup, Sharlene L., Riebling, Eric H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Feild, Joseph H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): BIENEMAN, CHARLES A
• Application Number:
  US09/392,027
• Time in Patent Office: 1,546 Days
• Field of Search: 715/536, 715/513, 704/2, 704/5, 704/4, 704/8
• US Class Current: 715/236
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/10 Text processing natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30; processing or translation of natural language G06F40/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/211 Syntactic parsing, e.g. based on context-free grammar [CFG] or unification grammars
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/232 Orthographic correction, e.g. spell checking or vowelisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/253 Grammatical analysis; Style critique
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/268 Morphological analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/47 Machine-assisted translation, e.g. using translation memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/55 Rule-based translation
• 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

The present invention is a system of integrated, computer-based processes for monolingual information development and multilingual translation. An interactive text editor enforces lexical and grammatical constraints on a natural language subset used by the authors to create their text, which they help disambiguate to ensure translatability. The resulting translatable source language text undergoes machine translation into any one of a set of target languages, without the translated text requiring any postediting.

Claims

1. A computer-based method for linguistically analyzing a document, the document including at least one tag indicative of a characteristic of a portion of the document, comprising:

parsing the document;

recognizing the tag as one tag type of a plurality of tag types, while parsing the document;

interpreting said one tag type and responsively determining the characteristic of the portion of the document;

using said characteristic to assist in linguistically analyzing the document; and

using said characteristic to assist in translating the portion of the document.

2. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as being a mathematical value and a mathematical unit.

3. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said tag is a SGML tag.

4. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as currency.

5. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said tag may be made invisible to a user.

6. A method, as set forth in claim 1, including the step of using said characteristic to assist in translating the document.

7. A method, as set forth in claim 6, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as requiring translation.

8. A method, as set forth in claim 6, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as translatable.

9. A method, as set forth in claim 6, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as non-translatable.

10. A method, as set forth in claim 6, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as not requiring translation.

11. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as not requiring analysis.

12. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as having been analyzed.

13. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as having been successfully analyzed.

14. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as having a specific content.

15. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies a permissible linguistic context for the portion of the document.

16. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as having a specific linguistic content.

17. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said characteristic identifies the portion of the document as being of a specific document structure type.

18. A method, as set forth in claim 17, wherein said specific document structure type is a bulleted item.

19. A method, as set forth in claim 17, wherein said specific document structure type is a table.

20. A method, as set forth in claim 17, wherein said specific document structure type is a cell of a table.

21. A method, as set forth in claim 17, wherein said specific document structure type is a heading.

22. A method, as set forth in claim 17, wherein said specific document structure type is a title.

23. A method, as set forth in claim 17, wherein said specific document structure type is a label associated with a graphic.

24. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein said tag is interactively assigned by a user.