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Enabling technology for multilingual natural language generation: the KPML development environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1997

JOHN A. BATEMAN
Affiliation:
Language and Communication Research Group, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK

Abstract

Natural language generation is now moving away from research prototypes into more practical applications. Generation functionality is also being asked to play a more significant role in established applications such as machine translation. In both cases, multilingual generation techniques have much to offer. However, the take-up of multilingual generation is being restricted by a critical lack both of large-scale linguistic resources suited to the generation task and of appropriate development environments. This paper describes KPML, a multilingual development environment that offers one possible solution to these problems. KPML aims to provide generation projects with standardized, broad-coverage, reusable resources and a basic engine for using such resources for generation. A variety of focused debugging aids ensure efficient maintenance, while supporting multilingual work such as contrastive language development and automatic merging of independently developed resources. KPML is based on a new, generic approach to multilinguality in resource description that extends significantly beyond previous approaches. The system has already been used in a number of large generation projects and is freely available to the generation community.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
1997 Cambridge University Press

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