Automatic Interpretation System Integrating Free-Style Sentence Translation and Parallel Text Based Translation

This paper proposes an automatic interpretation system that integrates freestyle sentence translation and parallel text based translation. Free-style sentence translation accepts natural language sentences and translates them by machine translation. Parallel text based translation provides a proper translation for a sentence in the parallel text by referring to a corresponding translation of the sentence and supplements free-style sentence translation. We developed a prototype of an automatic interpretation system for Japanese overseas travelers with parallel text based translation using 9206 parallel bilingual sentences prepared in task-oriented manner. Evaluation results show that the parallel text based translation covers 72% of typical utterances for overseas travel and the user can easily find an appropriate sentence from a natural utterance for 64% of typical traveler’s tasks. This indicates that the user can benefit from reliable translation based on parallel text for fundamental utterances necessary for overseas travel.