Can You Traducir This? Machine Translation for Code-Switched Input
Jitao Xu, François Yvon
Abstract
Code-Switching (CSW) is a common phenomenon that occurs in multilingual geographic or social contexts, which raises challenging problems for natural language processing tools. We focus here on Machine Translation (MT) of CSW texts, where we aim to simultaneously disentangle and translate the two mixed languages. Due to the lack of actual translated CSW data, we generate artificial training data from regular parallel texts. Experiments show this training strategy yields MT systems that surpass multilingual systems for code-switched texts. These results are confirmed in an alternative task aimed at providing contextual translations for a L2 writing assistant.
Topics & Concepts
Computer scienceMachine translationCode-switchingTask (project management)Focus (optics)Code (set theory)Natural language processingArtificial intelligenceTranslation (biology)Natural languageProgramming languageLinguisticsEngineeringChemistryPhysicsBiochemistrySystems engineeringGeneMessenger RNASet (abstract data type)PhilosophyOpticsNatural Language Processing TechniquesSpeech and dialogue systemsTopic Modeling