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Multilingual Dialogue-Based MT for monolingual authors: the LIDIA project and a first mockup

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Machine Translation

Abstract

Dialogue-Based Machine Translation (DBMT) is a new paradigm for translation situations where other approaches such as the Linguistic-Based (LBMT) and the Knowledge-Based (KBMT) approaches, are not adequate. In DBMT, although the linguistic knowledge sources are still crucial, and extralinguistic knowledge might be used if available, emphasis is on indirect pre-editing through a negotiation and a clarification dialogue with the author in order to get high quality translations without revision. Authors are distinguished from “spontaneous” writers or speakers by the fact that they want to produce a “clean” final message and may be willing to enter into such dialogues. After having described the main situational, linguistic and ergonomic issues in DBMT for monolingual authors, we describe ongoing work on the LIDIA project. The typical translational situation considered is the production of multilingual technical documentation in the form of HyperCard stacks. Notable points in the linguistic design include multilevel transfer with interlingual acceptions, properties and relations, the “guided language” approach (typed textual fragments and lexical peferences), and a TEI-inspired representation of texts and structures. The current mockup, LIDIA-1.0, demonstrates the majority of these ideas on a HyperCard stack, to be translated from French into German, Russian and English. Some of its aspects are discussed in detail, in particular the user interface, the object-oriented implementation, and the production of disambiguation dialogues.

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  1. GETA, IMAG-Campus, (UJF & CNRS), BP 53, 38041, Grenoble Cedex 9, France

    Christian Boitet & Hervé Blanchon

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  1. Christian Boitet
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  2. Hervé Blanchon
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Boitet, C., Blanchon, H. Multilingual Dialogue-Based MT for monolingual authors: the LIDIA project and a first mockup. Mach Translat 9, 99–132 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00986324

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