A figure of merit technique for the resolution of non-grammatical ambiguity.
S Madhu, Dean W. Lytle · Mech. Transl. Comput. Linguistics · 1965
Ambiguity in language translation is due to the presence of words in the source language with multiple non-synonymous target equivalents. A contextual analysis is required whenever a grammatical analysis fails to resolve such ambiguity. In the case of scientific and engineering literature, clues to the context can be obtained from a knowledge of the varying degrees of probability with which words occur in different fields of science. A figure of merit is defined, which is calculated from the probability of word occurrences, and which leads to the choice of a particular target equivalent of a word as the most probably correct one. The results of applying the technique to a set of twenty one Russian sentences indicate that the technique can be successful in about 90% of the cases. The technique can easily be adapted for use by a computer.