John Laffling

TOWARDS
HIGH-PRECISION
MACHINE
TRANSLATION

Based on Contrastive Textology

FORIS PUBLICATIONS

Berlin, New York 1991

(Distributed Language Translation 7)

[copyright Mouton de Gruyter]

Contents

Preface … ix

Acknowledgements … xi

List of Abbreviations … xiii

Chapter 1. Introduction …………………………………………………………1

1.1 Setting the Scene ........................................................... 1

1.2 Objectives ...................................................................... 1

1.3 Linguistic Engineering v Artificial Intelligence ................ 4

1.3.1 Linguistic Context v Inference .............................. 4

1.3.2 Understanding and Translation ............................. 6

1.4 Genre-Specificity ........................................................... 8

1.5 The Corpus .............................................................................. 10

1.6 Justification for Separate Dictionary for Nouns.................... 12

1.7 The Structure of the Study............................................................ 13

Notes....................................................................................... 14

Chapter 2. The Basis of the Study................................................... 19

2.1 Cohesion and Communication .................................................... 19

2.2 Cohesion and Text .......................................................... 22

2.3 Cohesion: a Definition....................................................... 22

2.4 Types of (Lexical) Cohesion ............................................ 24

2.5 Cohesion and Nomination ............................................... 26

2.6 Cohesion in Analysis ...................................................... 28

2.7 Cohesion in Transfer.................................................................... 31

Notes....................................................................................... 32

Chapter 3. Review of Various Approaches to Lexical Disambiguation/

Translation............................................................................... 35

3.1 The Sentence Approach........................................................................ 35

3.1.1 Analysis Procedures............................................... 35

3.1.2 Lexical Transfer ................................................. 39

3.2 Preference Semantics........................................................ 41

3.2.1 Templates and Formulas................................................... 41

3.2.2 Translation via Stereotypes............................................... 44

3.3 Knowledge-Based MT....................................................... 46

3.3.1 Frames, Scripts and MOPS............................................... 46

3.3.2 Paraphrase or Translation? ............................................. 50

Notes................................................................................................. 53

Chapter 4. Configuration and Operation of the Analyser............................... 57

4.1 Setting up the Lexicon ................................................... 57

4.1.1 The Goal of Analysis ......................................... 57

4.1.2 Meaning Discrimination ..................................... 58

4.1.3 Establishing Readings ......................................... 60

4.1.4 Composition of the Lexicon .................................. 61

4.2 Setting up the Machine Environment for Disambiguation .... 63

4.2.1 Technical Details ............................................... 63

4.2.2 Program Description ........................................... 63

4.2.2.1 Corpus Entry, Retrieval and Amendment....... 63

4.2.2.2 Conversion of the Corpus into Machine-
Interpretable Format ........................................... 63

4.2.2.3 Dictionary Maintenance................................ 65

4.3 The Process of Disambiguation ....................................... 65

4.3.1 The Sentence-Internal Mode ................................ 67

4.3.2 The Textual Mode .............................................. 69

4.3.2.1 De-Restriction of Adjective-Noun Collocations 72

4.3.3 The Extended Mode ....................................................... 73

4.4 Artificial Cohesion .................................................................... 75

Notes....................................................................................... 77

Chapter 5. Transfer: Theoretical Underpinnings and Practical Application 81

5.1 Parallel Texts .......................................................................... 81

5.2 Value of Parallel Texts ................................................... 82

5.2.1 Convergence vs Divergence ................................. 82

5.2.2 Knowledge-Based Transfer ................................. 83

5.2.3 Inter- and Intratextual Stylistic Cohesion ............... 87

5.3 Generalizability vs Uniqueness of Texts ............................ 91

5.4 Configuration of the Translator ................................................. 93

5.4.1 Setting up the Transfer Dictionary ...................... 93

5.4.2 Structure of the Transfer Lexicon............................... 96

5.5 Operation of the Translator ............................................ 99

Notes....................................................................................... 102

Chapter 6. Review, Perspectives and Conclusions 107

6.1 System Review ....................................................................... 107

6.1.1 Evaluation of the Analysis Stage ................................... 107

6.1.2 Evaluation of Transfer ................................................. 108

6.2 Extensibility ................................................................. 110

6.3 Problems, Limitations and Possible Improvements ....................... 111

6.3.1 Autosemantic and Synsemantic Sentences .............. 112

6.3.2 Lack of Syntactic Knowledge .............................. 112

6.3.3 The Pointer System ............................................ 113

6.3.4 Lack of Synthesis ................................................ 113

6.3.5 Dominant vs Non-Dominant Meanings ................. 114

6.4 Conclusions ................................................................. 114

Notes....................................................................................... 115

Appendix 1. Corpus-Specific Examples of Nouns that Defy the

Disambiguation Techniques of the Sentence Approach............................ 117

Appendix 2. Extracts from Analysis Dictionary ........................................ 123

Appendix 3. Extracts from Transfer Dictionary ............................... 129

Appendix 4. Sample Results of Analysis and Transfer .............................. 135

Bibliography.......................................................................................... 143

1 Primary Sources......................................................................... 143

2 Dictionaries/Works of Reference ..................................... 144

3 Other Literature ............................................................. 145

Index........................................................................................... 171