Hybrid machine translation

• US 9,798,720 B2
• Filed: 10/26/2009
• Issued: 10/24/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/24/2008
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Sawaf, Hassan, Shihadah, Mohammad, Yaghi, Mudar
• Primary Examiner(s): Dorvil, Richemond
• Assistant Examiner(s): Villena, Mark
• Application Number:
  US12/606,110
• Publication Number:
  US 20100179803A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,920 Days
• Field of Search: 704 4, 704 5, 704 8, 704 9, 704 10, 704266
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/40 Processing or translation of natural language natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30

Abstract

A system and method for hybrid machine translation approach is based on a statistical transfer approach using statistical and linguistic features. The system and method may be used to translate from one language into another. The system may include at least one database, a rule based translation module, a statistical translation module and a hybrid machine translation engine. The database(s) store source and target text and rule based language models and statistical language models. The rule based translation module translates source text based on the rule based language models. The statistical translation module translates source text based on the statistical language models. A hybrid machine translation engine, having a maximum entropy algorithm, is coupled to the rule based translation module and the statistical translation module and is capable of translating source text into target text based on the rule based and statistical language models.

Claims

1. A system for automatic translation, comprising:

at least one database for storing source and target text, rule based and statistical language models, and directed acyclic graphs (DAGS), wherein the rule based language models comprise syntactic, semantic and grammatical rule based models; and

a hybrid machine translation engine, having a maximum entropy algorithm that is coupled to the rule based language models and the statistical language models, the maximum entropy algorithm translating source text in one natural human language into target text in another natural human language based on the rule based language models, the statistical language models, and the DAGS;

wherein the hybrid machine translation engine is the only translation engine in the system.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the maximum entropy algorithm of the hybrid machine translation engine is configured to assign probabilities to different statistical language models and different rule based models.

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein the hybrid machine translation engine operates to perform translation of source text into target text based on available models.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the hybrid machine translation engine operates to perform translation of source text into target text when there are no rule based models available.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein the DAGS are annotated based on the semantic rule based models.

6. A system for automatic translation of source text into target text, comprising:

at least one database for storing source and target text and directed acyclic graphs (DAGS) and semantic rules;

a statistical translation component that generates DAGS based on source text;

a rule based translation component that eliminates one or more paths from the DAGS based on the semantic rules; and

a hybrid machine translation engine that annotates the DAGS based on semantic rules and translates source text in one natural human language into target text in another natural human language based on at least the DAGS using a maximum entropy algorithm;

wherein the hybrid machine translation engine is the only translation engine in the system.

7. A method for machine translation comprising:

receiving and storing source text;

generating directed acyclic graphs (DAGS) based on statistical models;

eliminating one or more paths from the DAGS based on semantic rules; and

translating, by a hybrid machine translation engine, the source text in one natural human language into target text in another natural human language based at least in part on the DAGS using a maximum entropy algorithm;

wherein the hybrid machine translation engine is the only translation engine performing translating on the text.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the hybrid machine translation engine further receives weighted inputs from statistical and rule based translation models and performs the translating based on the weighted inputs.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the statistical models include a statistical lexicon model, a statistical phrase model and a statistical language model.

10. The method according to claim 8, wherein the rule based models include a rule based syntactic model, a rule based semantic model, a rule based grammatical model and a rule based transfer system model.

11. The method according to claim 7, wherein the hybrid machine translation engine further receives weighted inputs from at least four of:

a statistical lexicon model, a statistical phrase model, a statistical language model, a rule based syntactic model, a rule based semantic model, a rule based grammatical model and a rule based transfer system model.