Word Translation Disambiguation Using Bilingual Bootstrapping

Abstract

This article proposes a new method for word translation disambiguation, one that uses a machine-learning technique called bilingual bootstrapping. In learning to disambiguate words to be translated, bilingual bootstrapping makes use of a small amount of classified data and a large amount of unclassified data in both the source and the target languages. It repeatedly constructs classifiers in the two languages in parallel and boosts the performance of the classifiers by classifying unclassified data in the two languages and by exchanging information regarding classified data between the two languages. Experimental results indicate that word translation disambiguation based on bilingual bootstrapping consistently and significantly outperforms existing methods that are based on monolingual bootstrapping.