Translation method and translation system for translating input expression into expression in another language

• US 9,582,502 B2
• Filed: 09/09/2015
• Issued: 02/28/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Oliveira, Viviane, Endo, Mitsuru
• Primary Examiner(s): Hang, Vu B
• Application Number:
  US14/849,584
• Publication Number:
  US 20160092437A1
• Time in Patent Office: 538 Days
• Field of Search: 704/2, 704/4, 704/5, 704/8
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/268 Morphological analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/45 Example-based machine translation; Alignment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/51 Translation evaluation
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/454 Multi-language systems; Localisation; Internationalisation

Abstract

A translation system includes translation subsystems by a plurality of translation policies with different translation output tendencies, performs forward translation and reverse translation by a consistent translation policy, and ranks the plurality of translation policies based on a similarity between the reverse translation sentences and the original sentence. As a result, a translation policy that best matches each input object to be translated is selected from the plurality of translation policies for each input sentence and, as a consequence, it is possible to cover a wide range of natures of sentences to be translated.

Claims

1. A translation method comprising:

obtaining an original sentence to be translated;

performing bidirectional translation to obtain a translation sentence corresponding to the original sentence by performing forward translation and obtain a reverse translation sentence from the translation sentence by performing reverse translation, consistently for each of a plurality of translation policies;

ranking the plurality of translation policies based on a degree of similarity between the reverse translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies and the original sentence; and

displaying the translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies in a state in which each translation sentence is related to the ranking, wherein

the forward translation and the reverse translation are performed consistently for each of the plurality of translation policies.

2. The translation method according to claim 1, wherein

in the performing bidirectional translation, when the original sentence is written in a first language,

a first translation sentence is obtained by translating the original sentence into a second language by a first translation policy,

a first reverse translation sentence is obtained by performing the reverse translation of the first translation sentence into the first language by the first translation policy,

a second translation sentence is obtained by translating the original sentence into the second language by a second translation policy, and

a second reverse translation sentence is obtained by performing the reverse translation of the second translation sentence into the first language by the second translation policy.

3. The translation method according to claim 2, wherein

in the ranking,

a first degree of similarity between the original sentence and the first reverse translation sentence is calculated,

a second degree of similarity between the original sentence and the second reverse translation sentence is calculated,

the first degree of similarity and the second degree of similarity are compared, and

the first translation sentence and the second translation sentence are ranked in descending order of degree of similarity.

4. The translation method according to claim 3, wherein

in the displaying,

the first translation sentence and the second translation sentence ranked in the ranking are displayed in such a way that a translation sentence in a higher rank is displayed in an upper portion of a display.

5. The translation method according to claim 1, wherein

the degree of similarity is a value obtained by subtracting a number of disparities in units of words between the reverse translation sentence and the original sentence from a number of matches in units of words between the reverse translation sentence and the original sentence.

6. The translation method according to claim 1, wherein

at least one of the plurality of translation policies is an algorithm reflecting a design guide of machine translation.

8. The translation method according to claim 1, wherein

in the obtaining, the original sentence is obtained by inputting the original sentence to a touch panel by a user, and

in the displaying, the translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies is displayed on the touch panel.

9. The translation method according to claim 8, further comprising:

displaying the reverse translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies near a corresponding translation sentence.

10. The translation method according to claim 1, wherein

in the obtaining, the original sentence is obtained by inputting the original sentence to a keyboard by a user, and

in the displaying, the translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies is displayed on a display.

11. The translation method according to claim 10, further comprising:

displaying the reverse translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies near a corresponding translation sentence.

12. The translation method according to claim 1, wherein

in the obtaining, the original sentence is obtained by inputting the original sentence to a microphone by a user, the microphone having speech recognition, and

in the displaying, the translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies is displayed on a display.

13. The translation method according to claim 12, further comprising:

displaying the reverse translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies near a corresponding translation sentence.

14. The translation method according to claim 1, wherein

in the obtaining, the original sentence is obtained by inputting the original sentence to an inputting apparatus by a user, the inputting apparatus including a touch panel, a keyboard, and microphone, and

in the displaying, the translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies is displayed on a display.

15. The translation method according to claim 14, further comprising:

displaying the reverse translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies near a corresponding translation sentence.

7. A translation system comprising:

a processor; and

a recording medium having stored therein instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising;

obtaining an original sentence to be translated,

generating, for each of a plurality of translation policies, a translation sentence corresponding to the original sentence by performing forward translation and generating a reverse translation sentence from the translation sentence by performing reverse translation,

ranking the plurality of translation policies based on a degree of similarity between the reverse translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies and the original sentence,

displaying the translation sentence of each of the plurality of translation policies on a display in a state in which each translation sentence is related to the ranking, and

wherein in the generating, the forward translation and the reverse translation are performed consistently for each of the plurality of translation policies.