2004 Volume 11 Issue 1 Pages 43-80
In this paper we propose a transfer and generation approach implemented in a prototype Japanese-Chinese machine translation system, jaw/Chinese. We developed the transfer-based system in two phases. The first phase covers Chinese translation solutions for propositional contents and the second covers those for Japanese function word after predicate (FWAP). In phase one, a given Japanese sentence is parsed, propositional contents in it are matched with transfer rules into Chinese semantic elements, and generated into a Chinese sentence. We designed three types of the transfer rules to keep records of Japanese patterns and their semantically corresponding Chinese expressions: base type, content-word addition type and function-word addition type. In phase two, The FWAP is partitioned into four groups, “causative etc”, “tense etc”, “modalities etc” and “conjunctions” by their functions. We designed a table format for translation rules of the former three groups, based on their correspondent Chinese expression components. The translation for “conjunctions” is dealt as function-word addition type. The Chinese semantic elements in phase one and expression components are arranged word order into a linear string. The evaluation shows the approach is effective and acceptable within machine translation.
