A generic framework for Arabic to English machine ... - Acsu Buffalo

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1.1. MOTIVATION allows for a generalized target language to be generated from the logical structures. In this research we translate from Arabic to English only, with a view to translate from Arabic to any other target language in the future. 1.1 Motivation The motivation for an Arabic-English translation tool is obvious when one considers that Arabic is the lingua franca of the Middle-Eastern world. Presently, 20 countries with a combined population of 450 million consider Standard Arabic as their national language. A simple test case during a study at Abu Dhabi University over three popular Arabic translation tools (Google, Sakhr’s Tarjim and Systran) revealed little success in generat- ing the correct meaning (Izwaini 2006). This research demonstrates the capabilities of Role and Reference Grammar as a base for multi-language translation. 1.2 Goals The goal of our research towards an Arabic-to-English machine translation system is to create a system that translates simplex sentences of Modern Standard Arabic as a source language into English. Our goal is to build a system which can translate a wide variety of simple sentence types. We aim to make this system as scalable as possible by allowing users to add to the lexicon and later, in future research, to include complex sentences. To achieve this goal, it is essential to build a robust and accurate lexical system and machine translator. One of the steps we have to achieve is to generate the universal logical structure from a source sentence. The system should be capable of dealing with free word order which Arabic exhibits. This poses a significant challenge to MT due to the vast number of ways to express the same sentence in Arabic. Also, we must account for verbs that do not exist in Arabic like the copula verb ‘to be’ and the verb ‘to have’. The system should deal with the transitivity of verbs (intransitive, transitive, 4
1.3. TECHNOLOGIES ditransitive). The Arabic language is written from right to left and has a unique letter shape. Words are written in horizontal lines from right to left. The letter shape depends on its position in the word; initial (prefix), medial (infix), final (suffix) or (Isolated). In technical linguistic terms, Arabic is a ‘pro–drop’ or ‘pronoun–drop’ language. It can define who takes the action by using conjugations. The pro–drop parameter is an aspect of grammar that allows subjects to be optional in some languages. That is, every inflection in a verb paradigm is specified uniquely and does not need to use independent pronouns to differentiate the person, number, and gender of the verb. The system should cover and solve the “pro–drop” challenge in Arabic. 1.3 Technologies We introduce the main technologies used to support the development of the research presented in this thesis. These technologies are mainly the XML language and Java. The most recent recommendation of the XML language has been presented by Bray et al. (2008). XML has become the default standard for data exchange among heterogeneous data sources (Arciniegas 2000). The UniArab system allows data to be stored in XML format. This data can then be queried, exported and serialized into any format the devel- oper wishes. The Java programming language is used to implement the logical structures. The primary advantage being that Java is platform-independent and thus highly suitable for MT. Advantages of XML XML is a generalized way to store data, which is not married to any particular technology. This makes it easy to store something, and then come back and grab it later with some other technology for processing. Using XML to exchange information offers a number of advantages, including the following: 5
Page 1 and 2: A generic framework for Arabic to E
Page 3 and 4: sentence and its linking algorithm
Page 5 and 6: Declaration I herby certify that th
Page 7 and 8: advices, but also academically and
Page 9 and 10: CONTENTS 2.3.1.2 Indefinite nouns .
Page 11 and 12: CONTENTS 4.4.1 Non-Roman alphabet s
Page 13 and 14: CONTENTS 7.2.8 Limitation of UniAra
Page 15 and 16: LIST OF FIGURES 4.4 Difference betw
Page 17 and 18: List of Tables 2.1 Dual: merely add
Page 19 and 20: LIST OF TABLES 5.9 Test strategy: p
Page 21 and 22: 1 Introduction The following paragr
Page 23: high-quality translation technology
Page 27 and 28: 1.4. THESIS ORGANIZATION 2009b). Ch
Page 29 and 30: 2.1. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ARABIC
Page 31 and 32: 2.2 Characteristics of Arabic words
Page 33 and 34: 2.2. CHARACTERISTICS OF ARABIC WORD
Page 35 and 36: 2.3. PART OF SPEECH INVENTORY OF TH
Page 37 and 38: 2.3.4 Verbs 2.3. PART OF SPEECH INV
Page 39 and 40: 2.3.4.2 Aspect 2.3. PART OF SPEECH
Page 41 and 42: 2.3. PART OF SPEECH INVENTORY OF TH
Page 43 and 44: 2.4.1.1 Verb and noun 2.4. SENTENCE
Page 45 and 46: Table 2.27: verb(V), subject(S) and
Page 47 and 48: 3 Role and Reference Grammar (RRG)
Page 49 and 50: 3.1. ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR LIN
Page 51 and 52: 3.2. FORMAL REPRESENTATION OF LAYER
Page 57 and 58: 3.3. NOUN PHRASE STRUCTURE appropri
Page 59 and 60: 3.4. LEXICAL REPRESENTATIONS FOR VE
Page 61 and 62: 3.5. WHY WE USE RRG AS THE LINGUIST
Page 63 and 64: 3.5. WHY WE USE RRG AS THE LINGUIST
Page 65 and 66: 3.6. SUMMARY there will be more com
Page 67 and 68: 4.1. ADVANTAGES OF MACHINE TRANSLAT
Page 69 and 70: 4.2.3 Lexical databases 4.2. COMPUT
Page 71 and 72: 4.3.2 Direct translation 4.3. BASIC
Page 73 and 74: 4.3. BASIC MACHINE TRANSLATION STRA
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would also be needed for an interli
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4.4.1 Non-Roman alphabet scripts 4.
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Figure 4.5: NP rule (NP -> det n pp
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4.5. CHALLENGES OF ARABIC TO ENGLIS
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Figure 4.7: Direct MT system 4.6.2
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4.7 Summary Figure 4.9: Structure t
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5 Design of Arabic to English machi
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5.2. DESIGNING AN XML LEXICON ARCHI
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5.3. DESIGN OF TEST STRATEGY Table
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5.4. DESIGN OF EVALUATION CRITERIA
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6 UniArab: a proof-of-concept Arabi
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6.1. CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE OF THE UN
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6.2. UNIARAB: LEXICAL REPRESENTATIO
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6.3. UNIARAB: GENERATION which mean
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Figure 6.11: UniArab’s GUI 1 6.4.
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6.4.1 Lexicon interface Figure 6.13
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6.6 Summary 6.6. SUMMARY We present
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7.2. SENTENCE TESTS to which standa
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Table 7.2: Test : Verb-subject; agr
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Figure 7.4: Verb-subject agreement
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Table 7.5: Test : gender-ambiguous
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Table 7.7: Test : Verb ‘to be’
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Table 7.9: Test : Verb ‘to have
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7.2. SENTENCE TESTS Table 7.11: Tes
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7.2.6 Pro-drop Arabic Table 7.13: T
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Table 7.15: Test : Intransitive 2 A
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7.2.7.3 Ditransitive Table 7.17: Te
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Table 7.19: Test : Ditransitive wit
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7.2. SENTENCE TESTS In a case where
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7.3 System evaluation 7.3. SYSTEM E
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7.3. SYSTEM EVALUATION search engin
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Now is not the end. It is not the b
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8.1. THESIS SUMMARY and so we hope
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and proving the suitability of the
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References Abn-Aqeal, 2007. sharah
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REFERENCES Salem, Y., Hensman, A.,
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Appendix 139
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• Yasser Salem and Brian Nolan. 2
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Arabic Letter and Phonetic Value Le
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C List of translatable sentences I
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she is an engineer. Zaid loves Fati
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Jack is eating with the spoon.
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Ayah tore the page. ֓āyh
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Eman saw Sarah. r֓at ֓iymā
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Carl is brushing his hair. ym
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I want a book. ֓aryd ktāb
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Omar gave the book to Khalid.
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D Verbs in lexicon Verbs in Arabic
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Arabic Example Logical Structure
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Arabic Example Logical Structure
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Arabic ys. rs. r Example the wheel
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Arabic ֓adrs Example I am teach
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Package: Name of Class Class Summar
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