Machine Translation and Transliteration involving Related, Low-resource Languages


Book Description

Machine Translation and Transliteration involving Related, Low-resource Languages discusses an important aspect of natural language processing that has received lesser attention: translation and transliteration involving related languages in a low-resource setting. This is a very relevant real-world scenario for people living in neighbouring states/provinces/countries who speak similar languages and need to communicate with each other, but training data to build supporting MT systems is limited. The book discusses different characteristics of related languages with rich examples and draws connections between two problems: translation for related languages and transliteration. It shows how linguistic similarities can be utilized to learn MT systems for related languages with limited data. It comprehensively discusses the use of subword-level models and multilinguality to utilize these linguistic similarities. The second part of the book explores methods for machine transliteration involving related languages based on multilingual and unsupervised approaches. Through extensive experiments over a wide variety of languages, the efficacy of these methods is established. Features Novel methods for machine translation and transliteration between related languages, supported with experiments on a wide variety of languages. An overview of past literature on machine translation for related languages. A case study about machine translation for related languages between 10 major languages from India, which is one of the most linguistically diverse country in the world. The book presents important concepts and methods for machine translation involving related languages. In general, it serves as a good reference to NLP for related languages. It is intended for students, researchers and professionals interested in Machine Translation, Translation Studies, Multilingual Computing Machine and Natural Language Processing. It can be used as reference reading for courses in NLP and machine translation. Anoop Kunchukuttan is a Senior Applied Researcher at Microsoft India. His research spans various areas on multilingual and low-resource NLP. Pushpak Bhattacharyya is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science, IIT Bombay. His research areas are Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and AI (NLP-ML-AI). Prof. Bhattacharyya has published more than 350 research papers in various areas of NLP.




Automatic Translation of Languages


Book Description

Automatic Translation of Languages is a collection of papers that discusses the various concerns in automatic language translation systems. The text first covers algebraic linguistics and machine translation, and then proceeds to tackling the main concepts in automatic translation of languages. Next, the selection deals with the equivalence of models of language used in the fields of mechanical translation and information retrieval. The text also discusses computational procedure in linguistic research. The next chapters detail syntax and syntactic integration. The book will be of great use to scientists and professionals who involved in the research and development of computerized language translation systems.




Readings in Machine Translation


Book Description

The field of machine translation (MT) - the automation of translation between human languages - has existed for more than 50 years. MT helped to usher in the field of computational linguistics and has influenced methods and applications in knowledge representation, information theory, and mathematical statistics.




Machine Translation


Book Description

The use of the computer in translating natural languages ranges from that of a translator's aid for word processing and dictionary lookup to that of a full-fledged translator on its own. However the obstacles to translating by means of the computer are primarily linguistic. To overcome them it is necessary to resolve the ambiguities that pervade a natural language when words and sentences are viewed in isolation. The problem then is to formalize, in the computer, these aspects of natural language understanding. The authors show how, from a linguistic point of view, one may form some idea of what goes on inside a system's black box, given only the input (original text) and the raw output (translated text before post-editing). Many examples of English/French translation are used to illustrate the principles involved.




Handbook of Natural Language Processing and Machine Translation


Book Description

This comprehensive handbook, written by leading experts in the field, details the groundbreaking research conducted under the breakthrough GALE program--The Global Autonomous Language Exploitation within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), while placing it in the context of previous research in the fields of natural language and signal processing, artificial intelligence and machine translation. The most fundamental contrast between GALE and its predecessor programs was its holistic integration of previously separate or sequential processes. In earlier language research programs, each of the individual processes was performed separately and sequentially: speech recognition, language recognition, transcription, translation, and content summarization. The GALE program employed a distinctly new approach by executing these processes simultaneously. Speech and language recognition algorithms now aid translation and transcription processes and vice versa. This combination of previously distinct processes has produced significant research and performance breakthroughs and has fundamentally changed the natural language processing and machine translation fields. This comprehensive handbook provides an exhaustive exploration into these latest technologies in natural language, speech and signal processing, and machine translation, providing researchers, practitioners and students with an authoritative reference on the topic.




The Way of the Linguist


Book Description

The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey. It is now a cliché that the world is a smaller place. We think nothing of jumping on a plane to travel to another country or continent. The most exotic locations are now destinations for mass tourism. Small business people are dealing across frontiers and language barriers like never before. The Internet brings different languages and cultures to our finger-tips. English, the hybrid language of an island at the western extremity of Europe seems to have an unrivalled position as an international medium of communication. But historically periods of cultural and economic domination have never lasted forever. Do we not lose something by relying on the wide spread use of English rather than discovering other languages and cultures? As citizens of this shrunken world, would we not be better off if we were able to speak a few languages other than our own? The answer is obviously yes. Certainly Steve Kaufmann thinks so, and in his busy life as a diplomat and businessman he managed to learn to speak nine languages fluently and observe first hand some of the dominant cultures of Europe and Asia. Why do not more people do the same? In his book The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey, Steve offers some answers. Steve feels anyone can learn a language if they want to. He points out some of the obstacles that hold people back. Drawing on his adventures in Europe and Asia, as a student and businessman, he describes the rewards that come from knowing languages. He relates his evolution as a language learner, abroad and back in his native Canada and explains the kind of attitude that will enable others to achieve second language fluency. Many people have taken on the challenge of language learning but have been frustrated by their lack of success. This book offers detailed advice on the kind of study practices that will achieve language breakthroughs. Steve has developed a language learning system available online at: www.thelinguist.com.




Machine Translation


Book Description




The Possibility of Language


Book Description

This book is about the limits of machine translation. It is widely recognized that machine translation systems do much better on domain-specific controlled-language texts (domain texts for short) than on dynamic general-language texts (general texts for short). The authors explore this general domain distinction and come to some uncommon conclusions about the nature of language. Domain language is claimed to be made possible by general language, while general language is claimed to be made possible by the ethical dimensions of relationships. Domain language is unharmed by the constraints of objectivism, while general language is suffocated by those constraints. Along the way to these conclusions, visits are made to Descartes and Saussure, to Chomsky and Lakoff, to Wittgenstein and Levinas. From these conclusions, consequences are drawn for machine translation and translator tools, for linguistic theory and translation theory. The title of the book does not question whether language is possible; it asks, with wonder and awe, why communication through language is possible.




The Last Lingua Franca


Book Description

Examines the rise and fall of English as the most widely spoken language in human history and discusses what language will overtake its dominance as English-speaking nations are challenged by the rising wealth of Brazil, Russia, India and China.




Machine Translation


Book Description

This book describes a novel, cross-linguistic approach to machine translation that solves certain classes of syntactic and lexical divergences by means of a lexical conceptual structure that can be composed and decomposed in language-specific ways. This approach allows the translator to operate uniformly across many languages, while still accounting for knowledge that is specific to each language.