Statistical translation (A)

Abstract

Effective communication is indispensible in our everyday lives. With the blooming business market in China, being able to communicate fluently in Mandarin is essential for all multinational corporations. Hence, there is a huge demand for an accurate translation system. This report introduces the main concepts in Computational Linguistics and various methods of translation used to develop the theory and the system implemented. It also illustrates the system designs of the two translator application systems implemented, the preliminary and finalized model. The preliminary model is developed under the C# environment, a programming language that is user friendly and easy to learn as it generally uses Standard English. The finalized model is built on a Java environment, a language that is widely used. This model is an enhanced model of the preliminary model to include more sophisticated modules to create a more accurate and full featured translation application. Results and recommendations, such as integrating speech synthesis for users to learn the pronunciation of the English and Chinese words, are proposed at the end of this report.