Translation Ambiguity Research Articles

La <i>Châtelaine de Vergy</i> comme histoire tragique matrimoniale: de Marguerite de Navarre (1558) à Bandello (1573) et <i>Le sixiesme tome des histoires tragiques</i> (1582)

The anonymous thirteenth-century poem La Châtelaine de Vergy, a courtly love story that ends in bloodshed after its central secret is divulged, was adapted as the 70th novella in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron (published 1558–1559). Matteo Bandello’s Italian adaptation of this version of the story (in his posthumously published Quarta parte delle novelle [1573]) introduces an important change by specifying that the lovers are now clandestinely married; this detail is retained in an anonymous French translation of Bandello’s reworking, which appeared in one of the volumes of the popular Histoires tragiques. While critics have been puzzled at this apparent narrative flaw (marriage needs no secrecy), this essay argues that the shift is intentional by considering it in light of the problem of clandestine marriages and post-Tridentine matrimonial reform. While Marguerite’s novella already recasts the Châtelaine de Vergy story in matrimonial terms, Bandello further exploits its drama of speech, in which tragic events are triggered through speaking and divulging secrets, to question the Church tradition of contracting matrimony merely by the partners’ spoken words. A number of textual ambiguities in the French translation reveal furthermore that the story has subsequently been re-interpreted from a new perspective on betrothal as a non-binding spoken promise that gained ground during the Counter-Reformation. The textual transformations introduced into these three versions, moreover, are examined in the context of the development of the “histoire tragique” as a literary genre during the second half of the sixteenth century. This study thus identifies a correlation between the characteristics of the “histoire tragique” and matrimony’s socio-historical dynamics.

Język angielski i język niemiecki jako języki pivot w chińsko-polskim oraz polsko-chińskim tłumaczeniu umów najmu, dzierżawy oraz leasingu

This article gives short characteristics of the main problems of Chinese-Polish and Polish-Chinese translation of the different types of lease contracts. The translation was done by using pivot languages: German and English. The language and vocabulary used in Chinese, Polish, German and English lease contracts are researched into. Then, the translation strategy suggested by Kierzkowska (2002) is discussed. The author shows the problem of influence of culture on legal systems and languages of the law in general. Basic differences between property law in Poland, China, Germany, England and USA are analysed. Linguistic features and culture background that characterize legal language in China, Germany, Great Britain, USA and Poland differ significantly. Many rules and practices of foreign law can only be understood by applying legal thinking, cultural archetypes, history and common linguistics patterns of foreigners. The author also shows differences in the meaning of terms, which apparently signify the same entities and concepts in Polish and Chinese legal languages but, in fact, differ significantly. The author gives examples of other sources of ambiguity in translation of Polish and Chinese lease contracts and focuses on polysemy and homonymy which make the interpretation of legal language difficult and ambiguous. The meaning of Chinese characters depends on the textual context. However, when the translator does not know the background information of translated legal texts, it is very difficult to achieve high quality legal translation. Finally, the author shows that the translation of Chinese and Polish contracts by using German and English can be more difficult, problematic and incorrect due to differences between pivot languages, source language and target language.

Ambiguity translated for children

This article addresses ambiguity in translations for children. ‘Ambiguity’, here understood as something that allows for more than one interpretation, is supposed to be critical in translation for children as it clashes with some mediators’ ideas of what children’s literature is or ought to be. Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of “Den standhaftige Tinsoldat” [‘The steadfast tin soldier’] and a sample of twenty-four translations thereof (twelve into Swedish and twelve into Spanish) are used to explore different ways that ambiguity is translated for children. The objective is to determine if and how the tale’s ambiguities are manipulated in the various translations, and thus to initiate a theoretical discussion of ambiguity in translation for children. A difference is established between ‘textually resolvable’ and ‘textually irresolvable’ ambiguities and these two kinds of ambiguity are found to be treated differently in the analyzed sample of translations.

Action and Hamiltonians in higher-dimensional general relativity: first-order framework

We consider d > 4-dimensional spacetimes which are asymptotically flat at spatial infinity and show that, in the first-order framework, the action principle is well defined without the need of infinite counter-terms. It naturally leads to a covariant phase space in which the Hamiltonians generating asymptotic symmetries provide the total energy–momentum and angular momentum of the isolated system. This work runs parallel to our previous analysis in four dimensions Ashtekar et al (2008 Class. Quantum Grav. 25 095020 (arXiv:0802.2527)). The higher-dimensional analysis is in fact simpler because of the absence of logarithmic and super translation ambiguities.

Translation norms for English and Spanish: The role of lexical variables, word class, and L2 proficiency in negotiating translation ambiguity

We present a set of translation norms for 670 English and 760 Spanish nouns, verbs and class ambiguous items that varied in their lexical properties in both languages, collected from 80 bilingual participants. Half of the words in each language received more than a single translation across participants. Cue word frequency and imageability were both negatively correlated with number of translations. Word class predicted number of translations: Nouns had fewer translations than did verbs, which had fewer translations than class-ambiguous items. The translation probability of specific responses was positively correlated with target word frequency and imageability, and with its form overlap with the cue word. Translation choice was modulated by L2 proficiency: Less proficient bilinguals tended to produce lower probability translations than more proficient bilinguals, but only in forward translation, from Ll to L2. These findings highlight the importance of translation ambiguity as a factor influencing bilingual representation and performance. The norms can also provide an important resource to assist researchers in the selection of experimental materials for studies of bilingual and monolingual language performance. These norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Statistical query translation models for cross-language information retrieval

Query translation is an important task in cross-language information retrieval (CLIR), which aims to determine the best translation words and weights for a query. This article presents three statistical query translation models that focus on the resolution of query translation ambiguities. All the models assume that the selection of the translation of a query term depends on the translations of other terms in the query. They differ in the way linguistic structures are detected and exploited. The co-occurrence model treats a query as a bag of words and uses all the other terms in the query as the context for translation disambiguation. The other two models exploit linguistic dependencies among terms. The noun phrase (NP) translation model detects NPs in a query, and translates each NP as a unit by assuming that the translation of a term only depends on other terms within the same NP. Similarly, the dependency translation model detects and translates dependency triples, such as verb-object, as units. The evaluations show that linguistic structures always lead to more precise translations. The experiments of CLIR on TREC Chinese collections show that all three models have a positive impact on query translation and lead to significant improvements of CLIR performance over the simple dictionary-based translation method. The best results are obtained by combining the three models.

Improving statistical machine translation using shallow linguistic knowledge

We describe methods for improving the performance of statistical machine translation (SMT) between four linguistically different languages, i.e., Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean by using morphosyntactic knowledge. For the purpose of reducing the translation ambiguities and generating grammatically correct and fluent translation output, we address the use of shallow linguistic knowledge, that is: (1) enriching a word with its morphosyntactic features, (2) obtaining shallow linguistically-motivated phrase pairs, (3) iteratively refining word alignment using filtered phrase pairs, and (4) building a language model from morphosyntactically enriched words. Previous studies reported that the introduction of syntactic features into SMT models resulted in only a slight improvement in performance in spite of the heavy computational expense, however, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of morphosyntactic features, when reliable, discriminative features are used. Our experimental results show that word representations that incorporate morphosyntactic features significantly improve the performance of the translation model and language model. Moreover, we show that refining the word alignment using fine-grained phrase pairs is effective in improving system performance.

On the molecular mechanism of the evolution of genetic code alterations

Alterations to the standard genetic code have been found in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. This finding demolished the central dogma of molecular biology, postulated by Crick in 1968, of an immutable and universal genetic code, and raised the question of how organisms survive genetic code alterations. Recent studies suggest that genetic code alterations are driven by selection using a mechanism that requires translational ambiguity. In C. albicans, the leucine CUG codon is decoded as serine through structural alterations of the translational machinery, in particular, of Ser-tRNACAG, which has dual identity and novel decoding properties. Here, we review the molecular mechanism of CUG reassignment, focusing on the structural change of the translational machinery and on the impact that such alteration had on the evolution of the Candida albicans genome.

A Method for English-Korean Target Word Selection Using Multiple Knowledge Sources

Target word selection is one of the most important and difficult tasks in English-Korean Machine Translation. It effects on the overall translation accuracy of machine translation systems. In this paper, we present a new approach to Korean target word selection for an English noun with translation ambiguities using multiple knowledge such as verb frame patterns, sense vectors based on collocations, statistical Korean local context information and co-occurring POS information. Verb frame patterns constructed with dictionary and corpus play an important role in resolving the sparseness problem of collocation data. Sense vectors are a set of collocation data when an English word having target selection ambiguities is to be translated to specific Korean target word. Statistical Korean Local Context Information is an N-gram information generated using Korean corpus. The co-occurring POS information is a statistically significant POS clue which appears with ambiguous word. To evaluate our approach, we applied the method to Tellus-EK* system, English-Korean automatic translation system currently developed at ETRI [1],[2]. The experiment showed promising results for diverse sentences from web documents.

Translation Probabilities in Cross-Language Information Retrieval

Translation ambiguity is a major problem in dictionary-based cross-language information retrieval. To attack the problem, indirect disambiguation approaches, which do not explicitly resolve translation ambiguity, rely on query-structuring techniques such as a structured Boolean model and Pirkola's method. Direct disambiguation approaches try to assign translation probabilities to translation equivalents, normally by employing co-occurrence statistics of target language terms from target documents as disambiguation clues. Thus far, translation probabilities have not been well explored in terms of statistical query translation models, query formulation, or cross-lingual retrieval models, etc. In order to study the impact of translation probabilities on retrieval effectiveness in direct disambiguation approaches, this paper empirically investigates the following issues: different disambiguation factors affecting the calculation of translation probabilities, the comparison of cross-lingual query formulation techniques involving translation probabilities, the relationship between the accuracy of translation disambiguation and retrieval effectiveness, and the relationship between top n translations and retrieval effectiveness.

Automatic crosslingual thesaurus generated from the Hong Kong SAR Police Department Web corpus for crime analysis

AbstractFor the sake of national security, very large volumes of data and information are generated and gathered daily. Much of this data and information is written in different languages, stored in different locations, and may be seemingly unconnected. Crosslingual semantic interoperability is a major challenge to generate an overview of this disparate data and information so that it can be analyzed, shared, searched, and summarized. The recent terrorist attacks and the tragic events of September 11, 2001 have prompted increased attention on national security and criminal analysis. Many Asian countries and cities, such as Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore, have been advised that they may become the next targets of terrorist attacks. Semantic interoperability has been a focus in digital library research. Traditional information retrieval (IR) approaches normally require a document to share some common keywords with the query. Generating the associations for the related terms between the two term spaces of users and documents is an important issue. The problem can be viewed as the creation of a thesaurus. Apart from this, terrorists and criminals may communicate through letters, e‐mails, and faxes in languages other than English. The translation ambiguity significantly exacerbates the retrieval problem. The problem is expanded to crosslingual semantic interoperability. In this paper, we focus on the English/Chinese crosslingual semantic interoperability problem. However, the developed techniques are not limited to English and Chinese languages but can be applied to many other languages. English and Chinese are popular languages in the Asian region. Much information about national security or crime is communicated in these languages. An efficient automatically generated thesaurus between these languages is important to crosslingual information retrieval between English and Chinese languages. To facilitate crosslingual information retrieval, a corpus‐based approach uses the term co‐occurrence statistics in parallel or comparable corpora to construct a statistical translation model to cross the language boundary. In this paper, the text‐based approach to align English/Chinese Hong Kong Police press release documents from the Web is first presented. We also introduce an algorithmic approach to generate a robust knowledge base based on statistical correlation analysis of the semantics (knowledge) embedded in the bilingual press release corpus. The research output consisted of a thesaurus‐like, semantic network knowledge base, which can aid in semantics‐based crosslingual information management and retrieval.

Improving query translation in English–Korean cross-language information retrieval

Query translation is a viable method for cross-language information retrieval (CLIR), but it suffers from translation ambiguities caused by multiple translations of individual query terms. Previous research has employed various methods for disambiguation, including the method of selecting an individual target query term from multiple candidates by comparing their statistical associations with the candidate translations of other query terms. This paper proposes a new method where we examine all combinations of target query term translations corresponding to the source query terms, instead of looking at the candidates for each query term and selecting the best one at a time. The goodness value for a combination of target query terms is computed based on the association value between each pair of the terms in the combination. We tested our method using the NTCIR-3 English–Korean CLIR test collection. The results show some improvements regardless of the association measures we used.

Technical issues of cross-language information retrieval: a review

This paper reviews state-of-the-art techniques and methods for enhancing effectiveness of cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). The following research issues are covered: (1) matching strategies and translation techniques, (2) methods for solving the problem of translation ambiguity, (3) formal models for CLIR such as application of the language model, (4) the pivot language approach, (5) methods for searching multilingual document collection, (6) techniques for combining multiple language resources, etc.

Investigation of the Cauchy-Riemann equations for one-dimensional image recovery in intensity interferometry.

A method of image recovery using noniterative phase retrieval is proposed and investigated by simulation. This method adapts the Cauchy-Riemann equations to evaluate derivatives of phase based on derivatives of magnitude. The noise sensitivity of the approach is reduced by employing a least-mean-squares fit. This method uses the analytic properties of the Fourier transform of an object, the magnitude of which is measured with an intensity interferometer. The solution exhibits the degree of nonuniqueness expected from root-flipping arguments for the one-dimensional case, but a simple assumption that restricts translational ambiguity also restricts the space of solutions and permits essentially perfect reconstructions for a number of non-symmetric one-dimensional objects of interest. Very good reconstructions are obtained for a large fraction of random objects, within an overall image flip, which may be acceptable in many applications. Results for the retrieved phase and recovered images are presented for some one-dimensional objects and for different noise levels. Extensions to objects of two dimensions are discussed. Requirements for signal-to-noise ratio are derived for intensity interferometry with use of the proposed processing.

Important technical issues for digital libraries with multiple collections, different languages, and diverse audiences (SIG III, DL)

This session will focus on important technical issues when implementing digital libraries with multiple collections, different languages, and diverse audiences. A group of experts who have both research and implementation experiences of such digital libraries will join the panel to discuss the following key issues: (1) metadata strategies, (2) interoperability among various knowledge organization systems adopted by different collections, and (3) multilingual information access. Digital libraries may contain resources in many languages. Accessible through the Internet, libraries may be consulted by individuals in other cultural/linguistic “locales” seeking resources in their own languages or searching across languages for resources in languages other than their own. In order to enable the efficient and effective acquisition, storage and retrieval of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic resources, a digital library has to be designed from the outset to allow for heterogeneous linguistic and cultural content. The design process is called “internationalization.” Internationalization involves: determining the metadata elements, attributes, value spaces and values that are culturally and linguistically dependent and, if the display and interface of the library are to be localized (translated), those metadata elements that are to be rendered in multiple languages. providing a mechanism for internationalization that provides administrative control, cross-language searching capability, authority for keywords (terms), translations and translation equivalents. providing an internationalization scheme that offers reusability, scalability and interfaces with the relevant international standards. In the networked environment, cross-domain, cross-subject, and cross-language searching are common practices. However, users are often unaware of the diverse knowledge organization systems (KOS), which impede optimal retrieval. These include thesauri, subject headings lists, classification systems, and other categorization schemes used to index or organize different databases and digital collections. This presentation surveys activities and research projects aimed at achieving interoperability among KOS and analyzes the methods used in achieving interoperability. In all, 18 projects are examined and evaluated. Eight conventional and new methods that have proven to be widely accepted and promising are summarized. The fact that only about one third of 680 million online users are native English speakers, and English will still be the dominant language for the Web pose increasing demands on accessing information without language obstacles. Cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) systems are the keys to satisfy these demands because they provide the functionalities for the user to retrieve documents that satisfy her information need regardless of the language in which those documents are written. However, CLIR also poses new challenges that do not exist in monolingual settings. This presentation will concentrate on one such challenge, i.e., how to handle translation ambiguities. Due to the complexity of human languages, translation ambiguities are pervasive in cross language environments, and can greatly reduce the retrieval effectiveness if they are not handled properly. Moving beyond previous automatic disambiguation approaches, this presentation will discuss the design of the user-assisted query translation approach, which is aimed at constructing a synergic relation between the user and the retrieval system. The presenter will demonstrate the usefulness of the user-assisted approach by illustrating some research work he conducted at the University of Maryland. The presentation will conclude with discussing implications to the further development of accessing information in digital libraries.

Solving a superstructure from two-wavelength x-ray powder diffraction data - a simulation

Two different kinds of phase ambiguities are intrinsic in two-wavelength x-ray powder diffraction from acentric crystal structures having pseudo-translation symmetry. In a test calculation we have solved the problem for the first time by two different phasing procedures developed originally in single-crystal structure analysis. They are the direct method of breaking enantiomorphous phase ambiguity in protein crystallography and that of breaking translational phase ambiguity for superstructures. An artificial structure was used in the test, which is based on atomic coordinates of the known structure, SHAS (C5H6O5N3K), with the atom K replaced by Rb. The arrangement of Rb atoms possesses a subperiodicity of t = (a + b + c)/2. Two-wavelength synchrotron x-ray powder diffraction data were simulated with λ1=0.0816nm and λ2=0.1319nm. Overlapped reflections were uniformly decomposed at the beginning and redecomposed afterward when the partial-structure information became available. The enantiomorphous phase ambiguity was resolved only for reflections with h + k + l even. Phases of reflections with h + k + l odd were derived by the direct method of solving superstructures. A fragment was then obtained, which led to the complete structure in five cycles of Fourier iteration.

On bidirectional English–Arabic search

AbstractIn Cross‐Language Information Retrieval (CLIR), queries in one language retrieve relevant documents in other languages. Machine‐Readable Dictionaries (MRD) and Machine Translation (MT) systems are important resources for query translation in CLIR. We investigate the use of MT systems and MRD to Arabic–English and English–Arabic CLIR. The translation ambiguity associated with these resources is the key problem. We present three methods of query translation using a bilingual dictionary for Arabic–English CLIR. First, we present the Every‐Match (EM) method. This method yields ambiguous translations because many extraneous terms are added to the original query. To disambiguate query translation, we present the First‐Match (FM) method that considers the first match in the dictionary as the candidate term. Finally, we present the Two‐Phase (TP) method. We show that good retrieval effectiveness can be achieved without complex resources using the Two‐Phase method for Arabic–English CLIR. We also empirically evaluate the effectiveness of the Arabic–English MT approach using short, medium, and long queries of TREC7 and TREC9 topics and collections. The effects of the query length to the quality of the MT‐based CLIR are investigated. English–Arabic CLIR is evaluated via MRD and English–Arabic MT. The query expansion via posttranslation approach is used to deemphasize the extraneous terms introduced by the MRD and MT for English–Arabic CLIR.

Building a Chinese-English wordnet for translingual applications

A WordNet-like linguistic resource is useful, but difficult to construct. This article proposes a method to integrate five linguistic resources, including English/Chinese sense-tagged corpora, English/Chinese thesauruses, and a bilingual dictionary. Chinese words are mapped into WordNet. A Chinese WordNet and a Chinese-English WordNet are derived by following the structures of WordNet. Experiments with Chinese-English information retrieval are developed to evaluate the applicability of the Chinese-English WordNet. The best model achieves 0.1010 average precision, 69.23% of monolingual information retrieval. It also gains a 10.02% increase relative to a model that resolves translation ambiguity and target polysemy problems together.

Human otolith–ocular reflexes during off-vertical axis rotation: effect of frequency on tilt–translation ambiguity and motion sickness

The purpose of this study was to examine how the modulation of tilt and translation otolith–ocular responses during constant velocity off-vertical axis rotation varies as a function of stimulus frequency. Eighteen human subjects were rotated in darkness about their longitudinal axis 30° off-vertical at stimulus frequencies between 0.05 and 0.8 Hz. The modulation of torsion decreased while the modulation of horizontal slow phase velocity (SPV) increased with increasing frequency. It is inferred that the ambiguity of otolith afferent information is greatest in the frequency region where tilt (torsion) and translational (horizontal SPV) otolith–ocular responses crossover. It is postulated that the previously demonstrated peak in motion sickness susceptibility during linear accelerations around 0.3 Hz is the result of frequency segregation of ambiguous otolith information being inadequate to distinguish between tilt and translation.

A Possible Role of Translation Ambiguity in Gene Evolution (A Hypothesis)

A hypothesis is put forward that the variability of translation machinery is one of the key factors of evolutionary transformations of genetic material. It considers the module principle of the evolution theory based on the concepts of duplication and divergence of genetic material, which is required for origination of new genes and proteins with new functions. The duplication results in the appearance of pseudogenes, functionally inactive, but serving a material for creating new functions. The possible mechanisms changing the translation machinery have been considered, which may lead to sporadic pseudogene activation “supplying” natural selection with mutational changes accumulated by pseudogenes to assess their adaptive value. This takes into account not only potential possibilities of mutational variability of the translation machinery, but also the possibility of protein prionization: also considered is a prion mechanism of inheritance, which is intensely studied nowadays.