Abstract. This paper describes a new technique for the direct translation of character n-grams for use in Cross-Language Information Retrieval systems. This solution avoids the need for word normalization during indexing or translation, and it can also deal with out-of-vocabulary words. This knowledge-light approach does not rely on language-specific processing, and it can be used with languages of very different natures even when linguistic information and resources are scarce or unavailable. Our proposal also tries to achieve a higher speed during the n-gram alignment process with respect to previous approaches. Key words: Cross-Language Information Retrieval, character n-grams, translation algorithms, alignment algorithms, association measures.
Jesús Vilares, Michael P. Oakes, Manuel Vil