Comparing Different Approaches to Treat Translation Ambiguity in CLIR: Structured Queries vs. Target Co-occurrence Based Selection

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xabier Saralegi ◽  
Maddalen Lopez de Lacalle
Keyword(s):  
Translation Ambiguity

Effects of Translation Ambiguity in Bilingual Word Association

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Donnelly Adams ◽  
Janet G. Van Hell ◽  
Natasha Tokowicz
Keyword(s):  
Word Association ◽  
Translation Ambiguity

scholarly journals Determinants of translation ambiguity

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Degani ◽  
Anat Prior ◽  
Chelsea M. Eddington ◽  
Ana B. Arêas da Luz Fontes ◽  
Natasha Tokowicz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
English Word ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Semantic Ambiguity ◽  
Dominance Structure ◽  
Translation Ambiguity

Abstract Ambiguity in translation is highly prevalent, and has consequences for second-language learning and for bilingual lexical processing. To better understand this phenomenon, the current study compared the determinants of translation ambiguity across four sets of translation norms from English to Spanish, Dutch, German and Hebrew. The number of translations an English word received was correlated across these different languages, and was also correlated with the number of senses the word has in English, demonstrating that translation ambiguity is partially determined by within-language semantic ambiguity. For semantically-ambiguous English words, the probability of the different translations in Spanish and Hebrew was predicted by the meaning-dominance structure in English, beyond the influence of other lexical and semantic factors, for bilinguals translating from their L1, and translating from their L2. These findings are consistent with models postulating direct access to meaning from L2 words for moderately-proficient bilinguals.

scholarly journals Constructing Uyghur Commonsense Knowledge Base by Knowledge Projection

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (16) ◽  
pp. 3318
Author(s):  
Azmat Anwar ◽  
Xiao Li ◽  
Yating Yang ◽  
Yajuan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Commonsense Knowledge ◽  
Scoring Model ◽  
Bilingual Dictionary ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Translation Ambiguity ◽  
Back Translation ◽  
Cross Lingual

Although considerable effort has been devoted to building commonsense knowledge bases (CKB), it is still not available for many low-resource languages such as Uyghur because of expensive construction cost. Focusing on this issue, we proposed a cross-lingual knowledge-projection method to construct an Uyghur CKB by projecting ConceptNet’s Chinese facts into Uyghur. We used a Chinese–Uyghur bilingual dictionary to get high-quality entity translation in facts and employed a back-translation method to eliminate the entity-translation ambiguity. Moreover, to tackle the inner relation ambiguity in translated facts, we made a hand-crafted rule to convert the structured facts into natural-language phrases and built the Chinese–Uyghur lingual phrases based on the similarity of phrases that corresponded to the bilingual semantic similarity scoring model. Experimental results show that the accuracy of our semantic similarity scoring model reached 94.75% for our task, and they successfully project 55,872 Chinese facts into Uyghur as well as obtain 67,375 Uyghur facts within a very short period.

Translation ambiguity in Mandarin-English bilinguals

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana M. Basnight-Brown ◽  
Stephanie A. Kazanas ◽  
Jeanette Altarriba
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Emotion Words ◽  
Direct Translation ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Ambiguous Words ◽  
Language Representation ◽  
Translation Ambiguity ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Multiple Translations

Abstract Research focused on the cognitive processes surrounding bilingual language representation has revealed the important role that translation ambiguity plays in how languages are stored in memory (Tokowicz & Kroll, 2007). In addition, translation of emotionally related information has been shown to be challenging because a direct translation does not always exist (Basnight-Brown & Altarriba, 2014). The focus of the current study was to explore the processing of ambiguous words for translations that differ in orthography. In Experiment 1, Chinese-English bilinguals translated concrete and abstract words that differed in the number of translations across languages. In Experiment 2, emotion words were introduced into the context, in order to examine differences in emotion translation across languages. The results revealed that words with a single translation were produced faster and more accurately than words that had multiple translations. Finally, translation of emotional stimuli was faster when translating Chinese words as compared to English words.

Translation Ambiguity and Individual Differences in L2 Vocabulary Learning

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Tokowicz ◽  
Alba Tuninetti ◽  
Tessa Warren ◽  
Karla Rivera-Torres
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Translation Ambiguity ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

Translation ambiguity but not word class predicts translation performance

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 458-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANAT PRIOR ◽  
JUDITH F. KROLL ◽  
BRIAN MACWHINNEY
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Normative Data ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Ambiguous Words ◽  
Psycholinguistic Variables ◽  
Translation Ambiguity ◽  
Low Probability ◽  
Successful Production

We investigated the influence of word class and translation ambiguity on cross-linguistic representation and processing. Bilingual speakers of English and Spanish performed translation production and translation recognition tasks on nouns and verbs in both languages. Words either had a single translation or more than one translation. Translation probability, as determined by normative data, was the strongest predictor of translation production and translation recognition, after controlling for psycholinguistic variables. Word class did not explain additional variability in translation performance, raising the possibility that previous findings of differences between nouns and verbs might be attributed to the greater translation ambiguity of verbs relative to nouns. Proficiency in the second language was associated with quicker and more successful production of translations for ambiguous words, and with more accurate recognition of translations for ambiguous words. Working memory capacity was related to the speed of recognizing low probability translations for ambiguous words. These results underscore the importance of considering translation ambiguity in research on bilingual lexical and conceptual knowledge.

Translation ambiguity in and out of context

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANAT PRIOR ◽  
SHULY WINTNER ◽  
BRIAN MACWHINNEY ◽  
ALON LAVIE
Keyword(s):  
Target Word ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Laboratory Setting ◽  
Conditional Distributions ◽  
Parallel Language ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Translation Ambiguity

ABSTRACTWe compare translations of single words, made by bilingual speakers in a laboratory setting, with contextualized translation choices of the same items, made by professional translators and extracted from parallel language corpora. The translation choices in both cases show moderate convergence, demonstrating that decontextualized translation probabilities partially reflect bilinguals’ life experience regarding the conditional distributions of alternative translations. Lexical attributes of the target word differ in their ability to predict translation probability: form similarity is a stronger predictor in decontextualized translation choice, whereas word frequency and semantic salience are stronger predictors for context-embedded translation choice. These findings establish the utility of parallel language corpora as important tools in psycholinguistic investigations of bilingual language processing.

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