Preferences and Linguistic Choices in the Multra Machine Translation System

A b stract The work to be presented here concerns the ordering of alternatives in the Multra Machine Translation System. The Multra MT system is a fundamental part of the Multra prototype, modeling a translation work bench with user-controlled mixed mode of mechanical and human translation. The Multra system is based on transfer and unification. It includes three main modules, responsible for analysis, transfer, and generation, respectively. In addition, there is a separate preference module ordering the analysis alternatives before passing them on to the transfer component. Preferences are expressed by means of linguistic rules defined over feature structures. Alternative transfer rules are applied according to specificity; a specific rule takes precedence over a more general one. The specificity principle also governs the application of generation rules. The MT system as a whole, as well as its separate modules, can be tuned to present the best alternative only, or the complete set of alternatives in the preferred order. 1 In tro d u ctio n The work to be presented here was carried out in the project Multilingual Support for Translation and Writing, Multra (Sågvall Hein 1993a). It concerns the ordering of alternatives in the Multra Machine Translation system. The Multra MT system is a fundamental part of the Multra prototype, modeling a translation work bench with user-controlled mixed mode of mechanical and human translation. In its present version, Multra supports the translation of car maintenance manuals from Swedish to German and English. The Multra system is based on transfer and unification. It includes three main modules, responsible for analysis (Sågvall Hein 1987 and in preparation), transfer (Beskow 1993a), and generation (Beskow 1993b). In addition, there is a separate preference module ordering the analysis alternatives before passing them on to the transfer component. Preferences are expressed by means of linguistic rules defined over feature structures. Alternative transfer rules are applied according to specificity; a specific rule takes precedence over a more general one. The specificity principle also governs the application of generation rules. The preference rules along with the specificity principle of the transfer and generation processes constitute the Multra preference machinery.