English-Thai Machine Translation in a Lexicalist Grammar

Abstract

In this research, we develop a machine translation (MT) system to translate useful phrases in tourism domain from English to Thai. We exploit the transfer-based approach within the theoretical framework of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) and a relevant semantic theory, minimal recursion semantics (MRS). The theories are chosen due to their robust computational capabilities. Our MT system is lexicalist in the sense that the semantic transfer takes place at the word level while HPSG ensures deep analyses of source and target languages.