Multilingual notation
Encyclopedia
A Multilingual notation is a representation in a lexical resource
that allows the translation
between two or more words.
UML
For instance, within LMF
, a multilingual notation could be as presented in the following diagram, for English / French translation. In this diagram, two intermediate SenseAxis instances are used in order to represent a near match between fleuve in French and river in English. The SenseAxis instance on the bottom is not linked directly to any English sense because this notion does not exist in English.
A more complex situation is when more than two languages are concerned, as in the following diagram dealing with English, Italian and Spanish.
But in the specific context of a lexical resource that is a bilingual lexicon, the term bilingual link is usually preferred.
between words, with different notions like dynamic and formal equivalences.
and NLP
lexicons. The term is not used in the context of translation dictionary that concerns mainly hand-held electronic translators.
Lexical resource
A lexical resource is a database consisting of one or several dictionaries.Depending on the type of languages that are addressed, the LR may be qualified as monolingual, bilingual or multilingual. For bilingual and multilingual LRs, the words may be connected or not connected, from a language to...
that allows the translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
between two or more words.
UMLUnified Modeling LanguageUnified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
diagrams
For instance, within LMFLexical Markup Framework
ISO 24613:2008, Language resource management - Lexical markup framework , is the ISO International Organization for Standardization ISO/TC37 standard for natural language processing and machine-readable dictionary lexicons...
, a multilingual notation could be as presented in the following diagram, for English / French translation. In this diagram, two intermediate SenseAxis instances are used in order to represent a near match between fleuve in French and river in English. The SenseAxis instance on the bottom is not linked directly to any English sense because this notion does not exist in English.
A more complex situation is when more than two languages are concerned, as in the following diagram dealing with English, Italian and Spanish.
Number of languages considerations
Within the context of a multilingual database comprising more than two languages, usually the multilingual notations are factorized, in order to save the number of links. In other terms, the multilingual notations are interlingual nodes that are shared among the language descriptions.But in the specific context of a lexical resource that is a bilingual lexicon, the term bilingual link is usually preferred.
Other terminology
Let us note that instead of translation (that has a rather broad meaning), some authors prefer equivalenceDynamic and formal equivalence
In Bible translation dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence are two approaches to translation. The terms are not found in general linguistics or translation theory but were coined by Eugene Nida...
between words, with different notions like dynamic and formal equivalences.
Context of use
This term is mainly used in the context of Machine translationMachine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...
and NLP
NLP
- Artificial intelligence :* Natural language processing, a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages- Medicine and biology :...
lexicons. The term is not used in the context of translation dictionary that concerns mainly hand-held electronic translators.