EAGER: Simplification as Machine Translation

这项探索性研究的早期拨款旨在推进文本简化技术，自动将复杂的英语文本改写为更简单的英语文本。对这一课题的研究有许多潜在的实际应用。它可以为残疾人、低识字率、非母语背景或非专业知识的人提供阅读辅助。它还可以帮助许多其他需要处理困难单词和复杂句子的计算机技术。这个为期一年的探索性项目侧重于不同阅读水平儿童的简化。如果这项技术取得成功，它将有助于让所有孩子都能接触到知识，并逐步提高他们的阅读技能。简化可以被认为是一项单语翻译任务，其中输出的含义与输入的含义相同，但其表面形式受到可读性或年级水平要求的限制。先前的工作已经在机器翻译和文本简化之间建立了联系，但将SMT技术视为黑盒子。在以往工作的基础上，本研究对统计机器翻译管道的关键部分进行了广泛的探索，以简化文本。它的目的是为不同的可读性级别量身定制简化。本研究主要开展了三个方面的研究工作：(1)构建由不同简化程度的复句组成的“平行语料库”；(2)开发目标简化的自动度量；(3)设计目标简化的特征。

This EArly Grant for Exploratory Research aims to advance the text simplification technology that automatically rewrites complex English texts into simpler English texts. Research into this topic has many potential practical applications. It can provide reading aids for people with disabilities, low-literacy, non-native backgrounds or non-expert knowledge. It can also help with many other computer technologies that need to process difficult words and complicated sentences. This one-year exploratory project focuses on simplification for children with different reading levels. If this technology is successful, it could help make knowledge accessible to all children and gradually help to improve their reading skills.Simplification can be thought of as a monolingual translation task, where the output is equivalent in meaning to the input, but its surface form is constrained by a readability or grade-level requirement. Prior work has drawn the connection between machine translation and text simplification, but has treated the SMT technology as a black box. Going beyond previous work, this study provides an extensive exploration of adapting key parts of the statistical machine translation pipeline to simplify text. It aims to tailor simplification to different readability levels. The three research activities being undertaken in this study are: (1) constructing a "parallel corpus" consisting of complex sentence paired with several different levels of simplification, (2) developing automatic metrics for targeted simplification, and (3) designing features for targeted simplification.