JPS5942347B2 - electronic translator - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an apparatus for translating the language of a first country into the language of a second country, and in particular to an electronic device capable of reducing storage capacity without delaying the search time required for translation. It is related to translation machines.

In recent years, so-called electronic dictionaries, translators, etc. (hereinafter referred to as electronic translators) are used to translate key-input words or sentences in the language of a first country into the corresponding language of a second country.

) is being developed (・).
The words or sentences of the second country corresponding to the words or sentences of the country are stored in association with a storage device such as a read-only memory (ROM) by some method, and the storage device The contents of
We have adopted a method of selectively searching and displaying the target words of the second country.

However, this method requires a point-by-point comparison between the key-entered language information such as words and sentences from the first country and the language information from the second country stored in a storage device such as ROM to determine a match. The disadvantage is that searching always takes a long time.

In order to eliminate such drawbacks, the applicant first filed a patent application in 1984-3.
In No. 9212, digital information representing the language of a second country corresponding to the language of the first country is stored in an addressable memory, and this memory is used to store the first two letters of the alphabet AA-ZZ forming the first language. We have proposed a data storage method for electronic dictionaries and the like that is addressed by command signals representing the constituent parts of characters (see FIG. 4).

) That is, an electrical signal representing the language of the second country corresponding to the language of the first country is stored as a digital signal in the memory Mu, and a command signal for the address in this memory Mu is sent to the alpha-beta head necessary for forming the language of the first country. Memory Mt is used as a signal representing the constituent parts of two characters AA-ZZ.
This storage method stores addresses from alphabets AA to ZZ in 2 bytes each (
16 bits), in this case 135
This has the drawback that it requires a memory capacity of 2 bytes, which is wasteful, increases the memory capacity, and hinders miniaturization of devices.

The present invention has developed an electronic translation machine that can eliminate the above-mentioned drawbacks, and aims to provide an electronic translation machine that employs a storage method that allows for extremely short search times and extremely reduced storage capacity. .

An embodiment in which the translator of the present invention is adopted as a so-called electronic dictionary will be described below. FIG. 1 shows an external view of an electronic dictionary. In the figure, 1 is the main body, 2 is a word input key consisting of a plurality of alphanumeric characters, and 3 is a key for converting the first country's language (English) into the second country's language. A Japanese translation key 4 for instructing translation into (Japanese) is a display device for displaying translated content, for example, and is constituted by a dot matrix type liquid crystal display or other display device.

5 is a key for controlling ON/OFF of the power supply.

As an example, the word from the first country (USA), ゛! If you want to input LOVELYl and translate it into a word in a second country (Japan), use each alphanumeric key of word input key 2 to enter [0VF[Y] in sequence, and then press key 3 to search. As will be explained later,
``LOVELYl'' is displayed on the display device 4.

As will be explained below, the present invention is particularly characterized by a method of storing data in a storage device such as a ROM used in a translator and a method of controlling the same.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the data storage state of the storage device used in the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram necessary for controlling an electronic dictionary adopted as an example realized using the storage device. Before explaining the block diagram of FIG. 3, the method of storing data in the storage device of FIG. 2 and its control method according to the present invention will be explained in the next section.

In Fig. 2, MU is an addressable memory that stores electrical signals representing the language of the second country corresponding to the language of the input words and sentences of the first country as digital information, such as ROM, etc. It is a semiconductor memory. The figure shows that if the input English word is "LOVELY", the digital information corresponding to the translated word "utsukushii" is stored.

Further, A is digital information representing a part-of-speech code, which in this case is an adjective. Next, MT is an addressable memory that stores command signals for addresses in the memory MU, and like the MU, it is composed of a ROM or the like.

That is, based on the command signal of the memory MT, the memory M
A predetermined address of U is selected, and the language of the second country corresponding to the language of the first country is retrieved and displayed from the memory MU.

Furthermore, MS is an addressable memory for storing command signals for addresses in memory MT.

As described above, according to the present invention, the command signals of the memory MS can be used to selectively and sequentially retrieve command signals from the memory MS, and the command signals of the memory MS can be used to retrieve the selected command signals from the memory MT, and can also be displayed from the memory MU. The present invention is characterized in that the command signal of the memory MT is used to extract the translated digital signal of the second country.

To explain more specifically with reference to the figure, the memory MS stores the start address of the memory MT divided by first character (alphabet A-Z).

Each alpha bet consists of 2 bytes (16 bits). The memory MT also stores the second character code (1 byte) and its start address (2 bytes) of the memory MU. Therefore, the memories MS and MT can be called search tables, and the memory MS can be divided into small blocks,
The division of memory MT may be called a large block.

``For example, if you key-in the English word ``LOVELY'' using the word input key K, and then press the Japanese translation key, the initial letter ``L'' of ``LOVELY'' entered in the key-in cover (described later) will be displayed. Based on this, the address (0054) indicated by 11L1 in the memory MS is selected, and based on the address command signal (0054) of this memory MS, the character code "O" of the second character following from the memory MT is selected, and the address (1A6) is selected.
0) selectively, and this MT's address code (
1A60) to search for digital information indicating a translated word corresponding to LOVELY in the memory MU.

A-F shown in the address code in the figure is decimal 10~
Represents 15. As mentioned above, according to the data storage method in memory, it can be realized with a small storage capacity of about 600 bytes without slowing down the search time, and the search time is extremely short.
It was less than a second.

In other words, the storage capacity is 1/2 to 1/3 of the conventional one (see Figure 4).
I was able to reduce it to . The configuration and control of the above storage device is
It will become clearer by explaining the block diagram in the figure. FIG. 3 is a control block diagram of the electronic dictionary according to the present invention, in which 2 is a word input key (K), 3 is a Japanese translation key (EJ), 4 is a display device (DlSP),
These are as shown in FIG.

KB is a key input buffer that temporarily stores data such as key-input words, MS, MT, and MU are semiconductor memories such as ROM explained in Fig. 2, ARl is an address register of memory MT, and AR2 is an address of memory MU. The register, CLB, is a buffer that temporarily stores the character code information of the second character of a key-input word, etc., J1 is a comparator to compare the contents of KB and CLB, and WB is a key-input word, etc. J2 is a comparator for comparing the contents of KB and WB to see if they match, and MB is a translation word selected from memory MU, that is, the language of the first country. It is a buffer that temporarily stores corresponding or related linguistic information. The following operation will be explained.

This article will explain the case of translating the English word "LOVELY" into Japanese as an example.

First, use the word key The code “L” of the memory MS is based on the initial letter “L” of the code information.
” is selectively extracted.

This address instruction is input to address register ARl, and based on the ARl output, address instruction 0 of memory MT is input.
The address corresponding to 054 is selected. In other words, the initial letter L
The second character code following is selected. This character code is transferred to the buffer CLB, and the key input cover CLB is transferred to the buffer CLB.
The comparator J1 compares the second character stored in B ("O" in this case) with the content "A" in CLB, and since they do not match, outputs a signal Sll, and counts the ARl register based on this output. rise. In other words, the next character code "E" is selected by the ARl count up, this code information is transferred to the CLB buffer, this is repeated, and the KB
A match is achieved by counting up three times until it matches the character code [0] of the second character of the buffer, that is, in this example. When KB=CLB, the signal Sl2 is output to the memory MT, and the memory MT receives this signal and writes the 2-byte address code "1" immediately after the character code "0".
A60'' is output to address register AR2. This address command specifies address 1A60 of the first word [LONG] starting with "LO" in memory MU. When this command is given to the memory MU, the memory MU outputs the character code information from the third character onwards to the buffer WB, and
The third and subsequent characters of the buffer are compared with the contents of the WB buffer, and if they do not match, the signal S2l is sent to the address register A.
It outputs to R2, counts up the AR2 register to the address of the next word, and repeats. If they match, a signal S22 is output to the memory MU, and the MU memory outputs digital information representing the meaning of the word "LOVELY" to the buffer M.
The contents of this buffer are converted into characters (not shown), and a translation of "LOVELY", such as "Utsukushii", is displayed on the display device DlSP. Although the above embodiment describes the case where it is adopted as an electronic dictionary, it goes without saying that it can also be implemented in various other electronic translation devices.

As explained above, the electronic translation machine of the present invention has the advantage that the storage capacity can be reduced without delaying the search time required for translation.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is an external view of an example in which the electronic translator of the present invention is adopted as an electronic dictionary, Fig. 2 is a diagram showing the data storage state of an example storage device used in the dictionary, and Fig. 3 is an example of the same dictionary. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the data storage state of a conventional storage device.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 A device for translating inputted predetermined language information of a first country into language information of a second country, the device comprising: the first country language information and the second country corresponding to the first country language information; A first memory means storing language information of a country, and the language information of the first country stored in the first memory means are divided into blocks according to the first two letters in common, and the first language of each block is divided into blocks. A second memory that sequentially stores pairs of address information indicating the storage location of the information and the second character in the linguistic information included in the block.
and a third memory means which sequentially stores address information indicating the storage position of a pair of the first linguistic information starting with each character and the second character in the linguistic information.
a memory means for detecting the first character in the input linguistic information;
means for reading out corresponding address information from the third memory means; searching the second memory means based on the read address information; means for reading out address information of the second country based on the read address information, means for searching the first memory means and reading the language information of the second country corresponding to the input language information; The second
An electronic translation machine characterized by being provided with means for externally outputting country language information.