22.08.2013 Views

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

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

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

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

5.3. DESIGN OF TEST STRATEGY<br />

Table 5.3: Test strategy: verb-subject agreement<br />

<strong>Arabic</strong> human-translated UniArab other<br />

yˇsrb ֒mr ālh. lyb Omar is drinking the milk. ? ?<br />

ˇsrb ֒mr ālh. lyb Omar drank the milk. ? ?<br />

mārk qrā ālktāb Mark read the book. ? ?<br />

syˇsrb mārk āllbn Mark will drink the milk ? ?<br />

Demonstrative Adjective-Noun:<br />

The system should place the Demonstrative Adjective-Noun Agreement that agrees in<br />

number and gender. The test sentences are shown in Table 5.4.<br />

Table 5.4: Test strategy: demonstrative adjective-noun agreement<br />

<strong>Arabic</strong> human-translated UniArab best of rest<br />

hd ¯ ā ālrˇgl This man ? ?<br />

d ¯ lk ālrˇgl That man ? ?<br />

Gender-Ambiguous proper nouns:<br />

Proper nouns can confuse MT in two different ways. The first, the MT system may<br />

not identify that the word is a proper noun and analyse it as a noun, adjective, or any<br />

other categories. The second is that it may fail <strong>to</strong> identify the gender of the noun and<br />

thus fail <strong>to</strong> provide in<strong>for</strong>mation needed <strong>for</strong> agreement in <strong>Arabic</strong>. The test sentences<br />

are shown in Table 5.5. The UniArab system should follow the rules <strong>for</strong> agreement in<br />

number and gender. This is due <strong>to</strong> the fact that <strong>Arabic</strong> differs greatly from <strong>English</strong> in<br />

the distribution of number and gender in the pronoun system, lexical items as well as<br />

the syntactic structure. This difference results in many agreement problems during the<br />

translation process.<br />

Table 5.5: Test strategy: gender-ambiguous proper nouns<br />

<strong>Arabic</strong> human-translated UniArab best of rest<br />

<br />

qr֓a ˇgāk ālktāb Jack read the book. ? ?<br />

qr֓at māry ālktāb Mary read the book. ? ?<br />

75

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!