Machine Translation of tial essions: efining the Relation between an erli and a Representation System*
Bonnie Jean Dorr · 1993
In this paper we present one aspect of our research on machine translation (MT): defining the re- lation between the interlingua (IL) and a knowledge representation (KR) within an MT system. Our in- terest lies in the translation of natural language (NL) sentences where the message contains a spatial rela- tion - in particular, where the sentence conveys infor- mation about the location or path of physical entities in the real, physical world. We explore several argu- ments for clarifying the source of constraints on the particular IL structures needed to translate these sen- tences. This paper develops one approach to defining these constraints and building an MT system where the IL structures designed to satisfy these constraints may be tested. In this way, we have begun to address one of the basic issues in MT research, providing in- dependent justification for the IL itself.