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Home | Research | Research Programs | Interactive Language Technologies |
Interactive Language TechnologiesPORTAGE: Machine Learning for TranslationProject SummaryThe aim of the PORTAGE project is to develop technology for allowing a computer to translate from one human language to another, and for providing a rough assessment of the quality of translations produced by human beings. The project started in September 2004, and is expected to end in April 2008. As explained in more detail in the technical overview, there are two main approaches to machine translation (MT): an older approach in which human experts write a set of translation rules for the computer based on their knowledge of how to translate from one language to another, and a newer approach in which the computer itself learns such rules from a huge bilingual corpus. The PORTAGE technology is based on the second, newer approach, often called "statistical machine translation". Provided a bilingual corpus for the two languages involved - the language one wishes to translate from (source) and the language one wishes to translate into (target) - is available, the statistical MT approach enables one to build a translator between the two languages much more quickly and economically than with the older approach. Thus, although our research has focused on English, French, Arabic, and Chinese as the main languages of interest, the PORTAGE technology is applicable to all human languages for which there is interest and the necessary bilingual corpus from which the technology 'learns' how to translate. To ensure that PORTAGE is competitive with the world's best translation systems, we participate in several international competitive evaluations of MT performance, including:
The PORTAGE technology's international visibility has been heightened by our participation, starting in October 2005, in the multimillion dollar GALE project sponsored by the US Government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The goal of GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) is to make foreign language (Arabic and Chinese) speech and text accessible to English monolingual people, particularly in military settings. As members of the Nightingale consortium, one of the three consortia participating in the project, our role is to supply MT technology for translation from Arabic and Chinese into English. See the Nightingale consortium announcement for more details. PORTAGE's state-of-the-art MT software (executable and source code) will soon be made available to Canadian academic institutions interested in carrying out research in statistical MT. For the announcement of this new initiative, see PORTAGEshared. Possible applications of the project might include:
Thus, the project is expected to have an impact on several sectors: translation, second-language education, and e-business. In terms of technology transfer, we welcome discussion with potential industrial partners interested in any of the possible application areas listed above (productivity tools for translators, tools for multilingual education, and others). For additional information, please consult the technical overview of this project. Research ContactsDr. Roland Kuhn Dr. George Foster Business ContactMichel Mellinger |
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