U.S.-Germany Dissertation Enhancement: Predicting Hidden Structure and Punctuation in Speech for Machine Translation

该项目将派遣华盛顿大学研究生Dustin Hillard前往亚琛工业大学进行为期三个月的机器翻译博士论文研究。Hillard先生将与亚琛的Hermann Ney教授以及卡尔斯鲁厄大学的Alex Waibel教授合作。该奖项的PI Mari Ostendorf教授是Hillard先生在华盛顿大学的论文导师。本研究解决了机器翻译中标点符号的两个主要问题：在对翻译单词的评价方面，语音翻译系统可以提供哪些单词之外的信息来提高翻译质量？如何最好地预测目标语言输出的标点符号？实验结果将提供标点符号和隐含韵律结构如何与机器翻译相互作用的全面比较。此外，将研究无监督学习算法，利用句法侧信息检测源语言中隐藏的韵律结构，并将该结构传达给翻译和目标语言输出。该奖项支持的研究具有挑战性，可能会推进机器翻译的基础知识。它代表了美国研究人员和德国研究人员之间在智力上有充分基础的伙伴关系。更广泛的影响为一名研究生在德国进行研究提供支持，从而为一名美国学生提供国际研究经验。此外，机器翻译的进步将有助于多语言世界的交流，并可应用于商业和国家安全部门。

This project will send Dustin Hillard, a graduate student at the University of Washington, to RWTH Aachen University for three months to conduct research for his doctoral dissertation in the field of machine translation. Mr. Hillard will collaborate with Professor Hermann Ney in Aachen and he will also collaborate with Professor Alex Waibel at the University of Karlsruhe. Professor Mari Ostendorf, the PI on this award, is Mr. Hillard's thesis advisor at the University of Washington.This research addresses two primary questions dealing with punctuation in machine translation: What information beyond the words can be given to a speech translation system to improve the translation quality in terms of evaluation of the translated words? How is the punctuation for the target language output best predicted? The experimental results will provide comprehensive comparisons of how punctuation and hidden prosodic structure interact with machine translation. In addition, unsupervised learning algorithms will be investigated for detecting hidden prosodic structure in the source language using syntactic side information and for communicating that structure to translation and target language output. Intellectual MeritThe research supported by this award is challenging and could potentially advance fundamental knowledge in machine translation. It represents an intellectually well-founded partnership between researchers in the U.S and researchers in Germany.Broader ImpactsSupport is provided for one graduate student to conduct research in Germany, thus providing a U.S. student with an international research experience. In addition, advances in machine translation will help communication in a multi-lingual world and could have applications to the commercial and national security sectors.