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Machine Translation and Type Theory

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Book cover Epistemology versus Ontology

Part of the book series: Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science ((LEUS,volume 27))

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Abstract

This paper gives an introduction to automatic translation via examples from the history of the field, where statistical and grammar-based methods alternate. Grammatical Frameword (GF) is introduced as an approach that uses type theory to provide high-quality translation between multiple languages. GF translation is fundamentally grammar-based but can be combined with statistical methods such as learning translation models from a corpus and ranking translation candidates by probabilities.

To Per Martin-Löf.

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Acknowledgements

Per Martin-Löf supervised my PhD thesis and taught me how to think about type theory and language. He also introduced me to the noisy channel model of Shannon. He wondered if statistical models were still considered useful in natural language processing, and they have ever since been a recurrent theme in our discussions. With his unique combination of insights in both statistics and logic, and his accurate knowledge of many languages, Per has continued to be a major resource for my work through the 21 years that have passed since my PhD. When I later started to look closer at statistical methods, I received inspiration and guidance from Joakim Nivre, Lluís Màrquez, and Cristina España. Lauri Carlson has helped me to understand the problems of translation in general. The model described in this paper has received substantial contributions from my own PhD students Peter Ljunglöf, Kristofer Johannisson, Janna Khegai, Markus Forsberg, Björn Bringert, Krasimir Angelov, and Ramona Enache. The insightful comments from an anonymous referee were valuable when preparing the final version of the paper. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement n:o FP7-ICT-247914 (http://www.molto-project.eu).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Aarne Ranta

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  1. Aarne Ranta
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Correspondence to Aarne Ranta .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Goteborg, 412 96, Sweden

    P. Dybjer

  2. Dept. Philosophy & Linguistics, University of Umea, Umea, 901 87, Sweden

    Sten Lindström

  3. Dept. Mathematics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Erik Palmgren

  4. M. de Vrieshof 4, Leiden, 2300 RA, Netherlands

    G. Sundholm

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Ranta, A. (2012). Machine Translation and Type Theory. In: Dybjer, P., Lindström, S., Palmgren, E., Sundholm, G. (eds) Epistemology versus Ontology. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4435-6_14

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