A specification and validating parser for simplified technical Spanish

A Specification and Validating Parser for Simplified Technical Spanish Remedios Ruiz Cascales Dept. of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Limerick remeruiz@hotmail.com Richard F. E. Sutcliffe Dept. of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Limerick Richard.Sutcliffe@ul.ie Abstract AECMA Simplified English for aircraft maintenance manuals is one of the best- known examples of a controlled language. In this paper we describe the development of its equivalent for Spanish. We also present a prototype validating parser and outline its evaluation. 1 Introduction A Controlled Language is a subset of a natural language which has a restricted lexicon and controlled grammatical structures. The objective of a Controlled Language is to improve readability, standardisation, accessibility and translatability of documentation. The best-known example is European Association of Aerospace Industries (AECMA) Simplified English (SE) (AECMA, 1998). Following the success of SE, specifications for languages other than English have been developed. Examples include FREM (Français Rationalisé Entendu Modulaire) for French aircraft maintenance manuals (Barthe, 1998), ScaniaSwedish for truck maintenance documentation (Almqvist and Hein, 1996), and Controlled Siemens Documentary German for software documentation (Schachtl, 1998). However, no research has been undertaken on the development of a Controlled Spanish. The objective of the work reported here was to design a Controlled Spanish for aircraft maintenance manuals which is similar to AECMA Simplified English and FREM. The stages involved in the work included the development of a number of writing rules in conjunction with a dictionary, and the design and evaluation of a Controlled Spanish checker to verify conformance with some of the rules. The result comprises the Simplified Technical Spanish (STS) Specification, which includes 36 rules, the STS General Vocabulary, which consists of a list of 875 words, and the STS Parser which has been designed to identify five different types of error which relate to six rules in the STS Specification. In this article we start by outlining some of the previous work in the areas of controlled languages and validating parsing. We then describe the method used to develop STS and summarise the resulting specification. Next, we explain the capabilities of the STS validating parser and report the results of an initial evaluation of it. Finally we draw conclusions and make suggestions for further work. 2 Previous Work 2.1 AECMA Simplified English AECMA SE comprises a restricted vocabulary of 1,565 words with an additional set of 57 rules for using that vocabulary (AECMA, 1998). SE originated when in 1979 the Association of European Airlines (AEA) asked the European Association of Aerospace Industries (AECMA) to investigate the readability criteria of its aircraft maintenance documentation. Through its Documentation Working Group (DWG), AECMA set up a project group called the Simplified English Working Group (SEWG), to research the problem and provide a solution. SE was the result of this initiative. The author of SE can use only three sources of words. Firstly there are Approved Words from the SE Guide. These constitute the base vocabulary which contains 1,565 words. There are 196 verbs in the base vocabulary and …

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