Methods and systems for generation of a translatable sentence syntax in a social networking system

• US 9,606,987 B2
• Filed: 05/06/2013
• Issued: 03/28/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 05/06/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Bao, Ling, van Heuven, Hugo Johan, Miao, Jiangbo, Tan, Li, Mercurio, David, Machedon, Maximilian
• Primary Examiner(s): Sarpong, Akwasi M
• Application Number:
  US13/888,244
• Publication Number:
  US 20140330551A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,422 Days
• Field of Search: 704/3, 704/1
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/00 Computer-aided design [CAD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/253 Grammatical analysis; Style critique
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/45 Example-based machine translation; Alignment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/47 Machine-assisted translation, e.g. using translation memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/56 Natural language generation
• 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

Sentence internationalization methods and systems are disclosed. The method may include: providing a developer interface to define an internationalized sentence syntax for an application on a social networking system, the internationalized sentence syntax for translating a natural language expression of a social graph edge of the social networking system; providing a sentence option on the developer interface to define grammar of the internationalized sentence syntax; generating a token structure including a language token to assist translation of the internationalized sentence syntax into a preferred language indicated by the language token, the token structure customizable via the developer interface to configure translation options; associating a social graph attribute with a first token of the token structure; and storing the sentence option and the token structure with the internationalized sentence syntax to facilitate run-time translation of the internationalized sentence syntax into the natural language expression in the preferred language.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

providing a developer interface for a developer account to define an internationalized sentence syntax to associate with an application on a social networking system that has multiple applications, the internationalized sentence syntax for rendering a natural language expression based on at least a social graph edge in a social graph of the social networking system on behalf of the application, wherein the social graph includes two or more social network nodes interconnected by one or more social graph edges;

generating a token structure to define the internationalized sentence syntax, wherein the token structure includes a customizable language token to designate the internationalized sentence syntax as a language-specific syntax to translate into a preferred language indicated by the customizable language token, the token structure customizable via the developer interface to configure translation options of the internationalized sentence syntax;

providing, via the social networking system, a sentence option on the developer interface for selection to define grammar of the internationalized sentence syntax, wherein defining the grammar includes inserting one or more tokens representing an actor, a target, an edge, or any combination thereof, into the token structure of the internationalized sentence syntax;

associating a social graph attribute with a first token of the token structure;

storing the sentence option and the token structure with the internationalized sentence syntax to facilitate run-time translation by the application of a natural language expression in a primary language into the natural language expression in the preferred language; and

performing, by a computer system of the social networking system, application-specific run-time translation of a user activity from the primary language to the preferred language by configuring the application to express the user activity through the application according to the internationalized sentence syntax, wherein said performing the application-specific run-time translation includes fitting grammatical elements of the user activity according to the token structure associated with the application, further wherein the fitting is based on attributes indicated by the social graph.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the social graph attribute includes associating a gender of an actor of the internationalized sentence syntax with the first token.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the social graph attribute includes associating a target attribute with the first token, the target attribute being whether a target object of the internationalized sentence syntax is possessive or nominative.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the social graph attribute includes associating a numeric attribute with the first token, the numeric attribute being whether a target or an actor of the internationalized sentence syntax is singular or plural.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the token structure is customized including an arrangement of tokens in the developer interface to generate the run-time translation based on the social graph attribute of the first token.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the social graph attribute includes associating a viewer attribute with the first token, the viewer attribute being a gender attribute or a seniority attribute of a potential viewer user of the natural language expression.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising presenting language options for the customizable language token on the developer interface, the language options presented in a hierarchy of relevance to the developer account'"'"'s present and prior language preferences.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating a raw sentence from the internationalized sentence syntax;

exporting the raw sentence to a third party for translations from the primary language to the one or more languages; and

importing the translations from the third party.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the translations imported from the third party include translations to the variations of the internationalized sentence syntax.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein the grammatical elements includes a sentence actor, a sentence target, a relationship established by the sentence actor or the sentence target, or any combination thereof.

10. A processor-based system, comprising:

a non-transitory storage medium; and

an internationalization platform module stored on the non-transitory storage medium executable by a processor, wherein the internationalization platform module provides computer-generated output;

wherein the internationalization platform module, when executed by the processor, is configured to;

provide a developer interface for a developer account to define an internationalized sentence syntax to associate with an application on a social networking system that has multiple applications, the internationalized sentence syntax for rendering a natural language expression of at least a social graph edge in a social graph of the social networking system on behalf of the application, wherein the social graph includes two or more social graph nodes, representing social network objects, interconnected by one or more social graph edges;

generate a token structure to define the internationalized sentence syntax, wherein the token structure includes a customizable language token to designate the internationalized sentence syntax as a language-specific syntax to translate into a preferred language indicated by the customizable language token, the token structure customizable via the developer interface to configure translation options of the internationalized sentence syntax;

providing, via the social networking system, a sentence option on the developer interface for selection to define grammar of the internationalized sentence syntax, wherein defining the grammar includes inserting one or more tokens representing an actor, an edge, a target, or any combination thereof, into the token structure of the internationalized sentence syntax;

associate a social graph attribute with a first token of the token structure;

store the sentence option and the token structure with the internationalized sentence syntax to facilitate run-time translation of the internationalized sentence syntax into the natural language expression in the preferred language; and

perform, by a computer system of the social networking system, application-specific run-time translation of a user activity from a first language to a second language by configuring the application to express the user activity through the application according to the internationalized sentence syntax, wherein said performing the application-specific run-time translation includes fitting grammatical elements of the user activity according to the token structure associated with the application, further wherein the fitting is based on attributes indicated by the social graph.

11. The processor-based system as recited in claim 10, wherein the internationalization platform module is configured to generate a gender token to define the gender of the internationalized sentence syntax'"'"'s actor.

12. The processor-based system as recited in claim 10, wherein the internationalization platform module is configured to generate a target token to determine whether the internationalized sentence syntax'"'"'s target is possessive or nominative.

13. The processor-based system as recited in claim 10, wherein the internationalization platform module is configured to generate a number token for each number in the internationalized sentence syntax to select a plural type of the corresponding number.

14. The processor-based system as recited in claim 10, wherein the computer system is configured to generate a viewer token to select the gender or seniority of targeted viewers of the translations.

15. A method performed by a computing device, comprising:

receiving an edge from a social graph to be expressed via a social application coupled to a social networking system having multiple applications, the edge establishing a directional relationship between an actor object and a target object, wherein the social graph includes two or more nodes, representing social network objects of the social networking system, interconnected by one or more edges;

identifying a supported language from a language token associated with an internationalized sentence syntax that is associated with the social application; and

rendering, by the computing device, a natural language expression of the edge in the supported language based on an attribute of the edge, the actor object, or the target object and based on at least a token structure in the internationalized sentence syntax defined for the attribute, wherein the token structure includes an actor token, an edge token, a target token, or any combination thereof, wherein the natural language expression is an application-specific run-time translation of the edge according to the internationalized sentence syntax, wherein said rendering includes fitting elements of the edge to the token structure associated with the application, further wherein the fitting is based on attributes indicated by the social graph; and

publishing, on behalf of the social application, the natural language expression in a forum on the social networking system.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein rendering the natural language expression includes determining a target attribute of whether the target is possessive or nominative and rendering the natural language expression based on the token structure associated with the target attribute.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein rendering the natural language expression includes determining a gender attribute of the actor object or the target object and rendering the natural language expression based on the token structure associated with the gender attribute.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein rendering the natural language expression includes determining a numeric attribute of the actor object or the target object and rendering the natural language expression based on the token structure associated with the numeric attribute.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein rendering the natural language expression is based on a viewer attribute of a user accessing the forum.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein rendering the natural language expression is based on a viewer attribute of a user in control of the forum.