Stylistic Grammars in Language Translation

Stylistic Grammars in Language Translation Chrysanne DiMARCO and Graeme HIRST Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 Abstract We are developing stylistic grammars to provide the basis for a French and English stylistic parser. Our stylistic grammar is a branching stratificational model, built upon a foundation dealing with lexical, syntactic, and semantic stylistic realizations. Its cen- tral level uses a vocabulary of constituent stylistic elements common to both English and French, while the top level correlates stylistic goals, such as clarity and concreteness, with patterns of these elements. Overall, we are implementing a computational schema of stylistics in French-to-English translation. We believe that the incorporation of stylistic analysis into machine translation systems will significantly re- duce the current reliance on human post-editing and improve the quality of the systems' output. 1 Introduction Current machine translation (MT) systems deal only su- perficially, if at all, with the translation of style. At best, MT output is syntactically correct but strictly neutral in tone. The expressive effects contained in the source text, together with the associated meaning, are lost. The translation of style involves two complementary and sometimes conflicting aims: • Producing a style appropriate to the particular target language, while • Preserving the original author's stylistic intent. These aims require an understanding of the internal stylis- tics of both the source and target languages as well as the comparative stylistics of the language pair. Our focus is the development of stylistic grammars that will provide the basis for an English and French stylis- tic parser. The ultimate aim is the design and implemen- tation of a computational schema of stylistics in French to English translation that will act as a post-editor to modify the output of a basic MT system to achieve the above- menti6ned complementary aims. We believe that MT is an excellent vehicle for research into stylistics and that the incorporation of stylistic anal- ysis into MT systems will significantly reduce the current reliance on human post-editing and will improve the qual- ity of the system output. 2 A Definition of Style for Machine Translation Our approach to a definition of style is non-literary, group- based, and, most important, goal-directed. A "group- based" approach emphasizes the stylistic standards shared by a body of writers, rather than the characteristics of an individual author. Examples of group styles can be found in newspaper reporting or scientific writing. By "goal-directed', we mean that we seek to explicitly cor- relate specific goals of style such as clarity, informality, or abstraction with particular syntactic structures and lexical choices. Why focus on group.based style? For MT, where we expect to deal with large amounts of similar types of text, the analysis of group style is of more interest than the id- iosyncratic style of any one writer. However, group style can be subdivided into two major types, literary and func- tional (or pragmatic). Analysing literary group style, as in a work of fiction, for example, is too ambitious a task for MT. …

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