An approach to machine translation via the rule-to-rule hypothesis
Gábor Prószéky · 2005
Abstract. The rule-to-rule hypothesis says that every syntax rule has its counterpart in se-mantics. If we replace semantics with translation, we get a basic concept a machine transla-tion system can rely on. Syntax-translation pairs are represented by pairs of patterns where pattern can stand for both rules and lexical items. Combining the advantages of example-based and rule-based machine translation, a new paradigm, pattern-based translation is in-troduced. The system called MetaMorpho based on these principles has been tested for English-Hungarian translation, and showed very promising results both in translation qual-ity and speed. 1. Rule-to-rule Translation The meaning of a complex linguistic structure is wholly determined by its sub-structures and the meanings of them. In the Rosetta machine translation system (Landsbergen 1985) we can meet a rather direct application of the composi-tionality principle: „The meaning of an expres-