Noun Phrase Reference in Japanese-to-English Machine Translation

This paper shows the necessity of distinguishing different referential uses of noun phrases in machine translation. We argue that differentiating between the generic, referential and ascriptive uses of noun phrases is the minimum necessary to generate articles and number correctly when translating from Japanese to English. Heuristics for determining these differences are proposed for a Japanese-to-English machine translation system. Finally the results of using the proposed heuristics are shown to have raised the percentage of noun phrases generated with correct use of articles and number in the Japanese-to-English machine translation system ALT-J/E from 65% to 77%.