Definiteness and Number in Japanese to German

Machine Translation

Melanie Siegel

Abstract

A significant problem when translating Japanese dialogues into German is the missing information on number and definiteness in the Japanese analysis output. The integration of the search for such information into the transfer process provides an efficient solution. Transfer rules, preference rules and default rules are combined. Thereby, grammatical and lexical knowledge of the source language, knowledge of lexical restrictions on the target language, domain knowledge and discourse knowledge are accessible.

Eins der signifikanten Probleme in der maschinellen ?Ubersetzung japanischer in deutsche Sprache ist die fehlende Information ?uber Numerus und Definitheit im japanischen Analyse-Output. Eine effiziente L?osung dieses Problems ist es, die Suche nach der relevanten Information in den Transfer zu integrieren. Transferregeln werden mit Pr?aferenzregeln und Default-Regeln kombiniert. Dadurch wird Information ?uber lexikalische Restriktionen der Zielsprache, ?uber die Dom?ane und ?uber den Diskurs zug?anglich.

1 Introduction

One of the significant problems in Japanese to German machine translation is that information on definiteness and number is in most cases not available on the surface of the Japanese utterance. Japanese has neither number agreement between verbs and nouns nor obligatory plural morphemes. However, for the generation of German utterances the generator needs such information as in many cases determiners are obligatory. Consider the following example from our collected data:

Japanese:

kayoobi wa watashidomo no tokoro de
Tuesday TOPIC we GEN side CASE DE