The Computer Translation of Interrogatives from English to Malay

Abstract

This report describes 3 classes of structures for English interro gatives and 4 classes for Malay interrogatives with the view of mapp ing between equivalent structures in the two languages. The result of this study is a computer grammar submodel for translating interro gatives in the English-Malay translation system being developed by the Computer-Aided-Translation research team at Universiti Sains Malaysia. Although only interrrogatives have been discussed in this report, this paper has also illustrated the general approach used in the development of computer translation grammar models. However, it should be pointed out that much simplification has been made in this paper in order to introduce an inherently complex process to the non- MT researcher. For example, only information on syntax is given on the intermediate structures and no information on semantics is men tioned. It is hoped that the omission of such details will not give rise to the false impression that computer translation is a simple process. Further work on interrogative structures will look into the inclu sion of stylistic variations, particularly in the use of the particle '-kah' with the questioned constituent.