SPOT: TRW’s Multi-Lingual Text Search Tool

SPOT: TRW'S MULTI-LINGUAl, TEXT SEARCH TOOL Peggy Otsubo TRW Systems Development Division R2/2162 One Space Park Redondo Beach, CA 90278 peggy@wilbur.coyote.trw.com ABSTRACT TRW has developed a text search tool that allows users to enter a query in foreign lan- guages and retrieve documents that match the query. A single query can contain words and phrases in a mix of different languages, with the foreign-language terms entered using the native script. The browser also displays the original document in its native script. Key terms in the browser display are highlighted. The interface is targeted for the non-native speaker and includes a variety of tools to help formulate foreign-lan- guage queries. Spot has been designed to inter- face to multiple search engines through an object-oriented search engine abstraction layer. It currently supports Paracers Fast Data Finder search engine, with support for Excalibur's RetrievalWare currently being developed. 1.0. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Design Objectives TRW has developed a text search tool that allows users to enter a query in a number of lan- guages and retrieve documents that match the query. This text search tool is called Spot. The following subsections describe the design objec- tives and goals of Spot. 1.1.1. Support multiple search engines Our government users currently use a variety of tools for different purposes. For example, an archival database is only available through a legacy text search system that performs its searches very quickly, but lacks a great deal in search functionality. Other users use Paracel's Fast Data Finder search engine due to its power- ful search capabilities and are only able to access its power through the FDF search tool user inter- face. One of our design objectives was to handle multi- ple search engines within the same user interface tool. This provides users with a single user inter- face tool to learn, while providing them with a choice of search engines. Users might choose to perform a natural language query using the Excalibur/ConQuest search engine's concept query and switch to the Fast Data Finder to search Chinese text. We also nimed to provide the users with the full functionality of each of the search engines. This approach necessitates a more generic approach to many functions to ensure that the same user interface can be tailored to differing search engine technologies. 1.1.2. Support multi-lingual data Internationalized support is fairly easy to obtain commercially for a number of commonly-sup- ported languages. The commercial products for internationalization are designed to support the marketing of a tool in a specific set of foreign countries, where the menus, buttons, error mes- sages, and text all need to be displayed in the appropriate foreign language. For example, if a specific product needs to be marketed to the Jap- anese, it might be running under Sun's Japanese Language Environment, with JLE providing sup- port for entering and displaying Japanese text. Multi-lingual support, however, is very difficult to obtain commercially. Our user community con- sists of native-English speakers, who want the menus and buttons to appear in English, …

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