The Project DB-MAT German-Bulgarian Machine Aided Translation

Central Issues:

Most translations are needed for technical documents in specific domains. Often domain knowledge is crucial for efficiency and for the quality of the translation task. DB-MAT investigates a new MAT-paradigm where the human user is supported by linguistic as well as by subject information.

The basic hypotheses of the approach are:

• domain knowledge is not encoded in the lexicon entries, i.e. we distinguish clearly between the language layer and the conceptual layer;
• the representation of domain knowledge is language independent and can encode most of the semantic entries in traditional terminological lexicons;
• the user accesses domain information by highlighting a text string and formulating a request for clarification using a menu-based interface;
• factual explanations to the user are clear and transparent although the underlying formalism for knowledge representation is rather complex;
• Conceptual Graphs (CGs) are adopted as the knowledge representation formalism due to their strong expressive power and well-defined operations. CGs seem rather suitable for representing and processing terminological knowledge with different granularity.

Funded by:

Volkswagen Foundation 1993 - 1995

Project Leader:

Walther v.Hahn

Scientists:

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Linguistic Modelling Laboratory

- Galia Angelova (galja@lmlserver.acad.bg),

- Kalina Bontcheva (K.Bontcheva@dcs.shef.ac.uk),

- Nevelin Boynov,

- Kiril Simov

University of Hamburg

- Walther v.Hahn

- Lutz Euler

- Heike Winschiers

Results:

DB-MAT results are communicated by research papers and tested in a pilot implementation with an extendable architecture. A list of all technical reports delivered to the Volkswagen Foundation is available as well.

Publications:

• v. Hahn, W. and G. Angelova. Knowledge Based Machine Aided Translation. Manuscript Hamburg 1995
• v. Hahn, W. and G. Angelova. Combining Terminology, Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation in Machine Aided Translation. In: TKE'96: Terminology and Knowledge Engineering. Proceedings of the Conference "Terminology and Knowledge Engineering", August 1996, Vienna, Austria.pp. 304 - 314
• Angelova, G. and K. Bontcheva. DB-MAT: A NL-Based Interface to Domain Knowledge. To appear in: Proceedings of the Conference "Artificial Intelligence - Methodology, Systems, Applications" (AIMSA-96), September 1996, Sozopol, Bulgaria.
• Angelova, G. and K. Bontcheva. DB-MAT: Knowledge Acquisition, Processing and NL Generation using Conceptual Graphs. To appear in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS-96), August 1996, Sydney, Australia, LNAI, Springer-Verlag.
• Angelova, G. and K. Bontcheva. NL Domain Explanations in Knowledge Based MAT. In: Proceedings of COLING-96, August 1996, Copenhagen, Denmark. pp. 1016 - 1019
• K. Bontcheva. Generation of Multilingual Explanations from Conceptual Graphs. In: Proceedings of RANLP-95, September 1995, Bulgaria. To appear in: Mitkov, Nikolov (Eds.), "Recent Advances in NLP 1995", Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 136, Benjamins Press, 1996.
• Petermann, H., Euler, L. and K. Bontcheva. CGPro - A PROLOG Implementation of Conceptual Graphs. Technical Report FBI-HH-M-251/95, University of Hamburg, October 1995.
• v. Hahn, W. and G. Angelova. Providing Factual Information in MAT. In: Proceedings of the Conference "MT - 10 Years on", Cranfield, UK, November 1994, pp. 11/1 - 11/16.
• v. Hahn, W. Innovative Concepts for Machine Aided Translation. In: Proceedings VAKKI, Vaasa, Finland, 1992, pp. 13 - 25.

Technical reports:

The following technical reports are either available here as postscript files or could be obtained on request from Walther v.Hahn:

• Boynov, N. and L. Euler. The Structure of the Lexicon and its Support in DB-MAT. Technical report 1-95, May 1995.
• v. Hahn, W. Linguistic Resources of DB-MAT. Technical report 2-95, July 1995.
• Bontcheva, K. Generation of NL Explanations in DB-MAT. Technical report 3-95, October 1995.
• v. Hahn, W. and G. Angelova. System Architecture and Some System-Specific Components in Knowledge-Based MAT. Technical report 1-94, July 1994.
• Angelova, G. and W. v. Hahn. Analysis of Translation Errors in German-Bulgarian Translation of Domain-Specific Texts. Technical report 2-94, July 1994.
• Winschiers, H. and G. Angelova. The Role of Knowledge Bases in Machine Aided Translation. Technical report 1-93, July 1993.
• Simov, K. The Role of a Morphological Component in a KB-MAT System. Technical report 2-93, July 1993.
• Winschiers, H. and G. Angelova. Solving Translation Problems of Terms and Collocations Using a Knowledge Base. Technical report 3-93, December 1993.
• Angelova, G. and H. Winschiers. Knowledge Based Explanations in Machine Aided Translation Technical report 4-93, December 1993.