Statistical linguistic analysis of source content

• US 9,916,306 B2
• Filed: 10/19/2012
• Issued: 03/13/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 10/19/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SDL Inc (RWS Holdings Plc)
• Original Assignee: SDL Inc (RWS Holdings Plc)
• Inventors: van den Oever, Laurens, Dent, Jason Matthew
• Primary Examiner(s): Tzeng, Forrest F
• Application Number:
  US13/656,543
• Publication Number:
  US 20140114642A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,971 Days
• Field of Search: 704 1, 704 2, 704 7, 704 9, 704232, 704239, 704256, 704277
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/00 Handling natural language data speech analysis or synthesis, speech recognition G10L
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/40 Processing or translation of natural language natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/44 Statistical methods, e.g. probability models
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/47 Machine-assisted translation, e.g. using translation memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/51 Translation evaluation

Abstract

Systems and method for statistical linguistic analysis. According to some embodiments, methods may include evaluating a source text using one or more types of statistical linguistic analysis to determine a translatability of the source text and providing the translatability of the source text to a client node.

Claims

1. A method for providing dynamic feedback within an authoring environment to improve overall quality of text in real time, the method comprising:

receiving in the authoring environment a first source text from an author;

displaying, via a processor communicatively coupled with a memory, the first source text in the authoring environment;

calculating a first numerical value representing translatability of the displayed first source text, the calculation of the first numerical value performed in real time based on a first trust score generated using a statistical machine translation engine for translation of the displayed first source text;

displaying in the authoring environment a second source text related to the first source text in meaning and differing from the first source text;

calculating a second numerical value representing translatability of the second source text, the second numerical value calculated in real time based on a second trust score generated using the statistical machine translation engine for translation of the second source text;

visually enhancing the display of the first and second source text in the authoring environment in real time based on the first and second calculated numerical values to indicate to the author translatability of the respective visually enhanced first and second source text; and

replacing the first source text with the second source text to improve the overall quality of text in the authoring environment.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising, within an authoring environment interface, associating the first and second source text with the visual enhancement, which represents the translatability of the source text.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising one or more statistical machine translation engines to determine a quantification of quality of a translation of the first and second displayed source text.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein each of the one or more statistical machine translation engines utilizes one or more domain-based parallel corpora.

5. The method according to claim 4, further comprising:

determining a domain for the first and second source text; and

receiving a trust score for the first and second source text from a statistical machine translation engine that utilizes a domain-based parallel corpus that corresponds to the domain of the first and second source text.

6. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

generating the first trust score of the first source text using a statistical machine translation engine that utilizes a domain-based parallel corpus that does not correspond to the domain of the first source text; and

generating the second trust score of the second source text using the statistical machine translation engine that utilizes the domain-based parallel corpus.

7. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

determining a domain for the first and second source text;

receiving a first plurality of trust scores for the first source text from a plurality statistical machine translation engines that each utilize a unique domain-based parallel corpus;

calculating the first numerical value representing translatability of the displayed first source text based on the first plurality of trust scores;

receiving a second plurality of trust scores for the second source text from the plurality statistical machine translation engines that each utilize the unique domain-based parallel corpus; and

calculating the second numerical value representing translatability of the displayed second source text based on the second plurality of trust scores.

8. The method according to claim 1, further comprising calculating the first and second numerical values representing translatability using a plurality of types of statistical linguistic analyzers that comprises one or more of a statistical grammar module, a statistical term module, a statistical spelling module, a statistical syntax module, a statistical style module, and combinations thereof.

9. The method according to claim 1, further comprising providing suggestions for improving the translatability of the first source text, the suggestions comprising proposed modifications to the first source text obtained from an n-gram statistical model.

10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising providing an estimated translation cost for the first and second source text.

11. A system, comprising:

at least one computing device comprising a memory that includes executable instructions and a processor executing the instructions to;

receive a first source text from an author at a client node;

display the first source text at the client node;

evaluate a first trust score representing translatability of the first source text using a plurality of types of statistical linguistic analysis, including a machine translation engine;

display a plurality of alternative source texts at the client node;

evaluate an alternative trust score for each of the plurality of alternative source texts, each of the alternative trust scores representing translatability of the respective alternative source text using the plurality of types of statistical linguistic analysis, including the machine translation engine;

enhance the first source text and each of the alternative source texts at the client node to reflect their respective translatability, based on the respective trust scores, the enhancement visually differentiating the first source text from the plurality of alternative source texts displayed within a same authoring environment, the first source text and each of the plurality of alternative source texts having varying translatability from one another; and

replace the first source text with a selection of at least one of the plurality of alternative source texts from the author at the client node to improve overall quality of the source text.

12. The system according to claim 11, wherein the one or more types of statistical linguistic analysis comprises one or more statistical machine translation engines, wherein each of the one or more statistical machine translation engines utilizes one or more domain-based parallel corpora.

13. The system according to claim 12, wherein the processor further executes the instructions to:

determine a domain for the source text; and

receive the first trust score for the first source text and the alternative trust score for each of the alternative source texts, from a statistical machine translation engine that utilizes a domain-based parallel corpus that corresponds to the domain of the source text.

14. The system according to claim 11, wherein the processor further executes the instructions to:

determine a domain for the source text; and

receive the first trust score of the first source text and the alternative trust score of each of the alternative source texts, from a statistical machine translation engine that utilizes a domain-based parallel corpus that does not correspond to the domain of the source text.

15. The system according to claim 12, wherein the processor further executes the instructions to:

determine a domain for the source text; and

receive a plurality of trust scores for the first source text and a plurality of alternative trust scores for each of the plurality of alternative source texts from a plurality statistical machine translation engines that each utilize a unique domain-based parallel corpus.

16. The system according to claim 11, wherein the one or more types of statistical linguistic analysis further comprises one or more of a statistical grammar module, a statistical term module, a statistical spelling module, a statistical syntax module, a statistical style module, and combinations thereof.

17. The system according to claim 11, wherein the processor further executes the instructions to provide suggestions for improving the translatability of the first source text, the suggestions comprising proposed modifications to the first source text obtained from an n-gram statistical model.

18. The system according to claim 11, wherein the processor further executes the instructions to provide an estimated translation cost for the first source text and one or more of the alternative source texts.

19. The system according to claim 11, wherein the plurality of types of statistical linguistic analysis includes statistical machine translation used for quantification of quality of the displayed source texts in context of a source language, the statistical machine translation trained using a parallel corpus of sentence pairs in the source language of the displayed texts.

20. A method for providing dynamic feedback within an authoring environment to improve quality of text in real time, the method comprising:

evaluating, via a processor communicatively coupled with a memory, a plurality of first trust scores for an authored source text received in the authoring environment from an author, the evaluation performed in real time using a plurality of domain-based statistical machine translation engines, the domain of each of the domain-based statistical machine translation engines being different from the domain of the authored source text, each of the first trust scores representing translatability of the authored source text using the respective domain-based statistical machine translation engine;

calculating a first translatability value for the authored source text using the plurality of first trust scores;

evaluating, via the processor communicatively coupled with the memory, a plurality of second trust scores for a suggested source text displayed in the authoring environment, the evaluation of the plurality of second trust scores for the suggested source text performed in real time using the plurality of domain-based statistical machine translation engines, each of the second trust scores representing translatability of the suggested source text using the respective domain-based statistical machine translation engine;

calculating a second translatability value for the suggested source text using the plurality of second trust scores;

visually enhancing display of the authored source text based on the calculated first translatability in the authoring environment to reflect quality of the authored source text in real time;

visually enhancing display of the suggested source text based on the calculated second translatability value in the authoring environment to reflect quality of suggested source text in real time; and

improving overall quality of the authored source text by replacing the authored source text in the authoring environment with the suggested source text.