Reference in Japanese-English Machine
Francis T. Bond, Kentaro Ogura · 1998
This paper shows the necessity of distinguishing different referential uses of NPs in Machine Translation. We propose a three-way distinction between the generic, referential and as- criptive uses of noun phrases (NPs), and argue that this is the minimum necessary to generate articles and number correctly when translating from Japanese to English. A detailed algorithm is proposed for determining the referentiality of Japanese NPs, based on a defeasible hierarchy of pragmatic rules that are applied top-down, from the clause to the NP. We also sketch the process of generating determiners and number using rules based on the different NP referentialities for a Japanese-English MT system. Using the proposed heuristics has raised the percentage of NPs generated with correct use of articles and number in the Japanese-English MT system ALT-J/E from 65% to 85%.