Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:33:05.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Real-time automatic insertion of accents in French text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2001

MICHEL SIMARD
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de recherche appliquée en linguistique informatique (RALI), Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; e-mail: [email protected],[email protected]
ALEXANDRE DESLAURIERS
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de recherche appliquée en linguistique informatique (RALI), Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; e-mail: [email protected],[email protected]

Abstract

Automatic Accent Insertion (AAI) is the problem of re-inserting accents (diacritics) into a text where they are missing. Unaccented French texts are still quite common in electronic media, as a result of a long history of character encoding problems and the lack of well-established conventions for typing accented characters on computer keyboards. An AAI method for French is presented, based on a statistical language model. Next, it is shown how this AAI method can be used to do real-time accent insertions within a word processing environment, making it possible to type in French without having to type accents. Various mechanisms are proposed to improve the performance of real-time AAI, by exploiting online corrections made by the user. Experiments show that, on average, such a system produces less than one accentuation error for every 200 words typed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)