We present a method for combining two bilingual dictionaries to make a third, using one language as a pivot. In this case we combine a Japanese-English dictionary with a Malay-English dictionary, to produce a Japanese-Malay dictionary suitable for use in a machine translation system. Our method differs from previous methods in its use of semantic classes to rank translation equivalents: word pairs with compatible semantic classes are preferred to those with dissimilar classes. We also experiment with the use of two pivot languages. We have made a prototype dictionary of over 75,000 pairs.

In this report we introduce ALT-J/M: a prototype Japanese-to-Malay translation system. The system is a semantic transfer based system that uses the same translation engine as ALT-J/E, a Japanese-to-English system.