Empirical methods for splitting compound words with application to machine translation

• US 7,711,545 B2
• Filed: 07/02/2004
• Issued: 05/04/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: University of Southern California
• Original Assignee: Language Weaver, Inc. (RWS Holdings Plc)
• Inventors: Koehn, Philipp
• Primary Examiner(s): Chawan; Vijay B
• Application Number:
  US10/884,174
• Publication Number:
  US 20050033565A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,132 Days
• Field of Search: 704/5, 704/2, 704/4, 704/10
• US Class Current: 704/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/268 Morphological analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/44 Statistical methods, e.g. probability models

Abstract

A statistical machine translation (MT) system may include a compound splitting module to split compounded words for more accurate translation. The compound splitting module select a best split for translation by the MT system.

Claims

1. A machine translation system implemented method, the method comprising:

identifying one or more split options for a compounded word in a source language, each split option having a translation in a target language, the identifying performed by the machine translation system;

ranking the compounded word and the one or more split options, the ranking performed by the machine translation system; and

selecting a translation option from the compounded word and the one or more split options, the selecting performed by the machine translation system.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing the translation option to a machine translation system for translation into the target language.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said ranking comprises:

ranking the compounded word and the one or more split options based on the number of split options.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said ranking comprises:

ranking the compounded word and the one or more split options based on the frequency of occurrence of the compounded word and the one or more split options in a source language corpus.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said ranking comprises:

identifying a translation pair including the compounded word in a parallel corpus, said translation pair including a translation of the compounded word in the target language; and

comparing the compounded word and the one or more split options to the translation of the compounded word in the target language.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said identifying comprises:

excluding a potential split option based on a part-of-speech of said potential split option.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the part-of-speech comprises one of a preposition and a determiner.

8. An apparatus comprising:

a split generator to identify one or more split options for a compounded word in a source language, each split option having a translation in a target language;

a module to generate ranking information for the compounded word and the one or more split options; and

a split selector to rank the compounded word and the one or more split options based on the ranking information and select a translation option from the compounded word and the one or more split options.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the module comprises:

a frequency module to identify the frequency of occurrence of the compounded word and the one or more split options in a source language corpus.

10. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the module comprises:

a translation lexicon to identify a translation pair including the compounded word in a parallel corpus, said translation pair including a translation of the compounded word in the target language, and compare the compounded word and the one or more split options to the translation of the compounded word in the target language.

11. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the module comprises a translation table generated by splitting compounded words in a parallel corpus and aligning the split compounded words with corresponding target words in the parallel corpus.

12. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the module comprises:

a module to exclude a potential split option based on a part-of-speech of said potential split option.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the part-of-speech comprises one of a preposition and a determiner.

14. An article comprising a machine-readable medium including machine-executable instructions, the instructions operative to cause a machine to:

identify one or more split options for a compounded word in a source language, each split option having a translation in a target language;

rank the compounded word and the one or more split options; and

select a translation option from the compounded word and the one or more split options.

15. The article of claim 14, further comprising instructions to cause the machine to:

provide the translation option to a machine translation system for translation into the target language.

16. The article of claim 14, wherein the instructions for ranking comprise instructions to cause the machine to:

rank the compounded word and the one or more split options based on the number of split options.

17. The article of claim 14, wherein the instructions for ranking comprise instructions to cause the machine to:

rank the compounded word and the one or more split options based on the frequency of occurrence of the compounded word and the one or more split options in a source language corpus.

18. The article of claim 14, wherein the instructions for ranking comprise instructions to cause the machine to:

identify a translation pair including the compounded word in a parallel corpus, said translation pair including a translation of the compounded word in the target language; and

compare the compounded word and the one or more split options to the translation of the compounded word in the target language.

19. The article of claim 14, wherein the instructions for identifying comprise instructions to cause the machine to:

exclude a potential split option based on a part-of-speech of said potential split option.

20. The article of claim 19, wherein the part-of-speech comprises one of a preposition and a determiner.