Combining bidirectional translation and synonymy for cross-language information retrieval

This paper introduces a general framework for the use of translation probabilities in cross-language information retrieval based on the notion that information retrieval fundamentally requires matching what the searcher means with what the author of a document meant. That perspective yields a computational formulation that provides a natural way of combining what have been known as query and document translation. Two well-recognized techniques are shown to be a special case of this model under restrictive assumptions. Cross-language search results are reported that are statistically indistinguishable from strong monolingual baselines for both French and Chinese documents. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search and Retrieval General Terms Experimentation, Measurement Keywords Cross-Language IR, Statistical translation

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: SIGIR
• Authors: Jianqiang Wang, Douglas W. Oard
• Keywords: Cross-language Information Retrieval, Keywords Cross-Language IR, Retrieval General Terms, SIGIR 2006