Translating English and Mandarin Verbs with Argument Structure (Mis)matches using LCS Representation

This paper applies and evaluates a semi-automatically acquired Mandarin Chinese lexicon (Olsen et al., 1998) with respect to translation of English and Chinese verbs in a UNESCO text (Otero, 1997). I demonstrate how Lexical Conceptual Structure templates allow the same semantic structure to apply both to verbs with thematic roles incorporated in the verb itself, and those requiring external thematic complements. Using as examples the English verb provide, the Chinese counterpart , and the English counterparts of in the text, I show how potential translations are included or eliminated automatically based on their thematic role structure. The example illustrates (i) how an interlingual thematic representation based in large part on English argument structure may be adapted felicitously to a historically unrelated language, and (ii) how an interlingual (IL) resource developed for analysis may also be used in generation.