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

This paper applies and evaluates a semi-automatically acquired Mandarin Chinese verb 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 that connate thematic roles in with the verbal meaning, and those with thematic complements. Using as examples the English verb provide, the Chinese counterpart (ti2 gong1), and the English counterparts of (ti2 gong1) 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.