JPH0421175A - Machine translator - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain a highly qualified translated sentence accurately expressing the meaning of an original sentence by providing the machine translator with an input storage part, an idiomatic expression storing part, an idiomatic expression deciding part, and a translation control part. CONSTITUTION:The translation control part 4 extracts (step F1) a sentence from the input storage part 1 and sends the extracted sentence to the idiomatic expression deciding part 3. When an appearance pattern stored in the idiomatic expression storing part 2 is included in the sentence, the deciding part 3 decides whether a completed sentence can be obtained only by a stored sentence or not. When the completion is obtained, the decided result is informed to the control part 4 to end the processing of the deciding part 3. The control part 4 determines the range of a document to be simultaneously translated based upon the decided result of the deciding part 3 and applies an instruction to a translation processing part 5. Then, all sentences stored in the storage part 1 have been translated or not, i.e. the translation has been completed or not, is decided, and when the translation of all the sentences has been completed, the processing of the control part 4 is ended, and if untranslated sentence are left, the processing is executed again.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of Industrial Application The present invention relates to a machine translation device that performs translation between different natural languages using a computer.

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, machine translation devices that use computers to translate natural languages have become popular. Conventional devices of this type output translation results by processing each sentence. For this reason, even when translating a series of sentences, the translation process is performed separately for each -sentence, and the connection between sentences is often lost in the translation result.

Problems to be Solved by the Invention As a result, the translation results are unnatural when looking at the text as a whole, and in some cases, the original meaning of the original text is completely lost.

In view of the above-mentioned problems, the present invention detects the idiomatic expression and translates the sentences together when the content that is semantically coherent appears divided into multiple sentences due to an idiomatic expression. The present invention provides a machine translation device that can obtain high-quality translations that accurately express the meaning of the original text.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides an input storage unit that stores a translated original text, and an idiomatic expression that stores idiomatic expressions that may appear across multiple sentences of the translated original text. a storage unit, an idiomatic expression determination unit that determines the presence or absence of an idiomatic expression spanning between a first sentence and a second sentence of the plurality of sentences by referring to the idiomatic expression storage unit; and an idiomatic expression determination unit. and a translation control section that controls translation processing so as to simultaneously translate a first sentence and a second sentence that share an idiomatic expression based on a determination result of the section.

Effect of the present invention With the above configuration, the idiomatic expression determination section determines whether or not there is an idiomatic expression that spans between the first sentence and the subsequent sentence (second sentence), and the translation control section By controlling the translation process so that multiple sentences that should be translated as a group are processed simultaneously based on the judgment result of the expression judgment unit, the contents that are semantically grouped can be translated into multiple sentences using idiomatic expressions. Even if it is divided into
By performing translation processing on these sentences, it is possible to obtain a high-quality translated sentence that accurately expresses the meaning of the original text.

EXAMPLE Hereinafter, an English-Japanese machine translation device that is an example of the present invention will be described.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an English-Japanese machine translation device according to an embodiment.

In FIG. 1, ES is an input sentence in English. Reference numeral 1 denotes an input storage unit that stores ESs, and 2 an idiomatic expression storage unit that stores idiomatic expressions that may appear across multiple sentences and their appearance patterns. 3 is an idiomatic expression determination unit that performs a process of determining whether or not a pattern matching the idiomatic expression data stored in the idiomatic expression storage unit 2 exists between the sentence specified by the translation control unit 4 and the subsequent sentence. It is. , 4 instructs the idiomatic expression determination unit 3 to perform idiomatic expression determination processing on the sentence read from the input storage unit 1, and further performs translation processing at the same time based on the determination result from the idiomatic expression determination unit 3. This is a translation control unit that determines the range of a sentence and controls a translation processing unit 5, which will be described later. 5 performs translation processing from English sentences to Japanese sentences for each range instructed by the translation control unit 4 to produce a Japanese output sentence JS.
This is a translation processing unit that outputs.

The operation of the English-Japanese machine translation device configured as described above will be explained below.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing the operation order of the idiomatic expression determining section 3 and the translation control section 4 shown in FIG.

In FIG. 2, first, the translation control unit 4 takes out one sentence from the input storage unit 1 (step F1), the idiomatic expression determination unit 3
send to The idiomatic expression determination unit 3 holds the sentence sent from the input storage unit 1, and refers to the idiomatic expression appearance pattern stored in the idiomatic expression storage unit 2 to determine whether any of the sentences currently held are present. It is determined whether an expression that matches the idiomatic expression appearance pattern or an expression that partially matches is included (step F2F3).

If it is not included (there is no possibility of it being included)
In , the idiomatic expression determining unit 3 notifies the translation control unit 4 that there is no idiomatic expression, and ends the process. If it is included (there is a possibility that it is included), the idiomatic expression determination unit 3 determines whether the idiomatic expression is complete with only the sentence held by the idiomatic expression determination unit 3. (Step F4).

If it is not completed (if a subsequent sentence is required), a request is sent to the translation control unit 4 to retrieve the subsequent sentence from the input storage unit 1, and the processing from step F1 onward is performed again.If it is completed, (If a subsequent bone is not required), the translation control unit 4 is notified of the type of idiomatic expression included and the number of sentences in which the idiomatic expression spanned, and the idiomatic expression determination unit 3 Finish processing. The translation control section 4 determines the range of sentences to be translated in degrees based on the determination result of the idiomatic expression determination section 3, and gives an instruction to the translation processing section 5 (step F5).

Thereafter, it is determined whether all the sentences stored in the input storage section 1 have been translated, that is, whether the translation has ended or not (step F6). If the translation of all the sentences has been completed, the translation control section 4 After the processing is completed, and if there are still untranslated sentences remaining, the processing from step F1 onwards is performed again.

The third ryJ shows an example of data stored in the idiomatic expression storage unit 2. The idiomatic expression storage unit 2 stores data in the form of expressions consisting of three columns.

The first column is an idiomatic expression number assigned to each idiomatic expression. The second column is a sentence number indicating how many sentences the idiomatic expression spans.

The third column describes the expressions that appear for each sentence number.

Next, the operation will be explained using an example of translation by the English-Japanese machine translation device of this embodiment. English input sentence El is rlt is
one thing to one your own
n children, J, and the English input sentence E2 is 'It is another to 1
over the children in the w
orld, J, and when translated by a conventional translation device that performs translation processing on a sentence-by-sentence basis, the result will be as follows.

That is, the English input sentence E1 is translated into the Japanese output sentence J1, ``Loving your own children is one thing, J,'' and the English input sentence E2 is translated into the Japanese output sentence J2r, ``Loving children around the world. That is something else.''

By translating these two sentences, English input sentence E1 and English input sentence E2, using the English-Japanese machine translation device of this embodiment described above, the Japanese output sentence JO is translated as ``Love your own children.'' , loving the children of the world is another.”
is obtained. An input sentence expressed as two sentences, an English input sentence E1 and an English input sentence E2, is translated into one sentence as a Japanese output sentence JO.

In order to perform such translation, the translation control unit 4 uses the English input sentence E1 and the English input sentence E stored in the input storage unit 1.
2, the English input sentence E1 is first extracted and sent to the idiomatic expression determination section 3. In the idiomatic expression determination section 3, the idiomatic expression storage section 2
Referring to the table shown in FIG. 3 stored in the table in FIG. do. The translation control unit 4 takes out the subsequent English input sentence E2 from the input storage unit 1 and sends it to the idiomatic expression determination unit 3. The idiomatic expression determination unit 3 confirms that the English input sentence E2 matches the expression of sentence number 2 of idiomatic expression number 1 in the table of FIG. 3, and further determines that a subsequent sentence is not required. The process will be delayed. At the same time, the translation control unit 4 is informed that the idiomatic expression with idiomatic expression number 1 that spans two sentences starting with the English input sentence E1 exists.

In the translation control unit 4, based on the report from the idiomatic expression determination unit 3, the translation processing unit 5 selects 2 sentences starting with the English input sentence E1.
Give instructions to translate sentences at once. Translation processing unit 5
Now, perform processing according to the instructions from the translation control unit 4.
Outputs the H original output sentence JO that has been translated into a sentence.

In particular, comparative expressions and contrastive expressions contain multiple events in content, and although they are often expressed as separate sentences even in natural language, we consider the meaning of these expressions together. The present invention is effective in translation processing when the meaning cannot be understood without it.

In addition, in this embodiment, the case where the present invention is applied to an English-Japanese machine translation device has been explained, but the present invention is not limited to English-Eitll machine translation, but can also be applied to Japanese-English machine translation, French-Japanese machine translation, etc. can.

Effects of the Invention As described above, by providing the idiomatic expression determination unit, the idiomatic expression storage unit, and the translation control unit, the present invention can improve semantically even when a group of contents appears divided into multiple sentences. By detecting these groups and translating multiple sentences at the same time, it is possible to generate high-quality translated sentences that accurately express the meaning of the original text.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a machine translation device according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a flowchart explaining the operation of the machine translation device according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a memory of the idiomatic expression storage unit 2. It is a conceptual diagram explaining a data structure. l... Input storage unit, 2... Idiomatic expression storage unit, 3... Idiomatic expression determination unit, 4... Group/translation control unit, 5...・Translation processing section.

Claims (1)

[Claims] an input storage unit that stores a translation original text; an idiomatic expression storage unit that stores idiomatic expressions that may appear across multiple sentences of the translation original text; an idiomatic expression determining unit that determines the presence or absence of an idiomatic expression that spans between the sentences by referring to the idiomatic expression storage unit; and a translation control unit that controls translation processing so as to simultaneously translate the first sentence and the second sentence.