Adaptive translation: Finding interlingual mappings using self-organizing maps

Abstract

This paper presents a method for creating interlingual word-to-word or phrase-to-phrase mappings between any two languages using the self-organizing map algorithm. The method can be used as a component in a statistical machine translation system. The conceptual space created by the self-organizing map serves as a kind of interlingual representation. The specific problems of machine translation are discussed in some detail. The proposed method serves in alleviating two problems. The main problem addressed here is the fact that different languages divide the conceptual space differently. The approach can also help in dealing with lexical ambiguity. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.