US 8,930,176 B2 · Interactive multilingual word-alignment techniques

Abstract

Techniques for interactively presenting word-alignments of multilingual translations and automatically improving those translations based upon user feedback are described herein. With one or more implementations of the techniques described herein, a word-alignment user-interface (UI) concurrently displays a pair of bilingual sentences, where one is a translation of the other, and interactively highlights linked (i.e., “word-aligned”) words and phrases of the pair. Other implementations of the techniques described herein offer an option for a user to provide feedback about the existing word-alignments or realign the words or phrases. In still other described implementations, word-alignment is automatically improved based upon that user feedback.

Claims20

Dependent claims

One or more computer-readable storage devices storing processor-executable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform operations that facilitate interactive exposing of word-alignments between a bilingual sentence pair, the operations comprising:

concurrently displaying each sentence of the bilingual sentence pair via a user-interface (UI);
receiving a user selection of an of-interest word or phrase of a first sentence of the bilingual sentence pair;
in response to the receiving, performing actions including:
highlighting the of-interest word or phrase via the UI;
finding a linked word in a second sentence of the bilingual sentence pair that corresponds to the of-interest word;
and
highlighting the linked word via the UI;
and
presenting to a user, via the UI, a control to reassign the highlighted word-alignment between the bilingual sentence pair.

6 more elements

One or more computer-readable storage devices storing processor-executable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform operations that facilitate interactive collection of user feedback regarding word-alignments between a bilingual sentence pair, the operations comprising:

concurrently displaying each sentence of the bilingual sentence pair via a user-interface (UI) on an output display;
determining whether a user selected an of-interest word or phrase of a first sentence of the bilingual sentence pair;
in response to determining that the user selected the of-interest word or phrase of the first sentence, highlighting the of-interest word or phrase via the UI;
determining whether the user selected a linked word or phrase of a second sentence of the bilingual sentence pair;
in response to determining that the user selected the linked word or phrase of the second sentence, highlighting the linked word or phrase via the UI;
receiving feedback from the user regarding a quality of the word-alignments between the bilingual sentence pair;
rating the feedback based at least in part on an amount of time between highlighting the linked word or phrase via the UI and receiving the feedback;
and
storing the feedback;
wherein the storing comprises storing at least a user identifier field that identifies the user who made the selections of the determining operations.

7 more elements

A method of improving word-alignments between a dataset of bilingual sentence pairs based upon collection of user feedback, the method comprising:

obtaining user-feedback ratings of the user's assessment of a quality standard of existing word-alignment of sentence pairs of the dataset of bilingual sentence pairs;
dividing the dataset of bilingual sentence pairs into at least two groups, where a retained group includes sentence pairs that meet or exceed the quality standard based upon the obtained user-feedback ratings and a to-be-revised group includes sentence pairs having the existing word-alignment that fall below the quality standard based upon the obtained user-feedback ratings;
obtaining, from multiple users, user-feedback word-realignment of words in realigned sentence pairs of the dataset of bilingual sentence pairs;
based upon the obtained user-feedback word-realignment of the realigned sentence pairs, calculating a corrected word-realignment of the realigned sentence pairs;
and
generating a new word-alignment model based upon the retained group of sentence pairs and the realigned sentence pairs.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Interactive multilingual word-alignment techniques

Life of this patent

Interactive multilingual word-alignment techniques

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20