The document discusses content writing optimization using a rewriter tool. It outlines the rewriter's capabilities such as providing paraphrases through synonyms, support verb transformations, and other linguistic rules. The rewriter has been developed to aid writing, translation, and machine translation. Evaluation results show the rewriter improves translation quality by paraphrasing complex linguistic constructs like support verb constructions. The document also discusses the rewriter's interface and linguistic resources and rules, and how the tool could benefit writers, translators and language learners.
1. CONTENT WRITING
OPTIMIZATION WITH REWRITER
Anabela Barreiro
ab@metatrad.com
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
2. OUTLINE
LINGUISTIC QUALITY ASSURANCE
HOW TO ACHIEVE WRITING OPTIMIZATION
REWRITER
PARAPHRASES COVERED BY REWRITER
REWRITER V0.1 AND V0.2 – INTERFACE AND MODUS OPERANDI
LINGUISTIC RESOURCES USED BY REWRITER
EVALUATION RESULTS
TRANSFORMATIONS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE
WHO COULD BENEFIT FROM REWRITER?
FROM REWRITER TO MACHINE TRANSLATION
IMPROVEMENT OF REWRITER
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
3. LINGUISTIC QUALITY ASSURANCE
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
Reassures that a certain level of linguistic quality is guaranteed in texts
Uses techniques to verify the quality of specialized documentation
Helps individuals/businesses connect with their target audience in a clear
and understandable way by achieving:
• strategic, high quality, meaningful content
• relevant content written and optimized specifically for a particular
purpose (or for a particular business)
• custom content (relevant keywords and adequate terminologies)
• original texts (creative writing) or domain specific texts (technical
writing)
• readable / publishable content
4. LINGUISTIC QUALITY ASSURANCE
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
Professional text writing and revision
• Orthographic, grammatical, stylistic and terminological verification of
the technical documents
• Use of tools
Spell and grammar checkers
Writing/authoring aids
Style guides
Terminologies (technical domains)
Controlled language
• Consistent, direct, and simple language
• Restricted grammar (avoid certain types of construction)
• Avoid complex reasoning, figures of speech, metaphors, etc.
• Elimination of wordiness
5. HOW TO ACHIEVE WRITING
OPTIMIZATION
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
Synonymy
Stylistics
PARAPHRASING
• effective in helping writers with writing difficulties or learners of a non-
native language (pedagogical exercise)
• essential component in the translation process and of an extreme value
to machine translation pre-editing
• can be employed in linguistic quality assurance for both source and
target texts
For the past few years, researchers have been trying to achieve
automated paraphrasing to respond to the commercial enterprises’ wish
to include paraphrases in their text processing tools, authoring
aids, learning tools, etc.
6. REWRITER – PARAPHRASING TOOL
authoring aid (word processing applications)
Language composition tool
Text production and style editor
Empirical testbed for linguistic quality assurance (source and target texts)
text (pre-)editing (machine translation)
“Revision memory” tool (≈ “translation memory”)
Applicable to general and technical language
(e.g. student texts or legal texts)
Portuguese version “ReEscreve” - publicly available service at:
http://www.linguateca.pt/ReEscreve/
Soon to be integrated in a cyber school project – “Ciberescola”
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
7. PARAPHRASES COVERED BY REWRITER
Synonyms in context (ex: phrasal verbs into equivalent expressions)
to clear up (weather) = (weather) to become better/brighter
Support verb constructions into single verbs
to make a decision = to decide
make a presentation of = present
to give support to N(AN) = to support N(AN)
to go V-ing = to continue V-ing
to get into contact with = to contact
to turn on N(light) = to extinguish N(light)
to become acid = to acidify
Support verb constructions into their stylistic variants
to make an audit = to perform an audit
to make an impression = to create an impression
Aspectual constructions into single verbs
to launch an attack = to attack
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
8. Adverbials (compounds into single adverbs)
in a constructive way = constructively
on purpose > purposely = deliberately
Relatives into participial adjectives
the president that was elected = the president elect
Relatives into possessives
the role that Europe plays/has = the role of Europe
the position that the Church defends = the position of the Church
Relatives into compound nouns (and vice-versa)
a container for the milk = a milk container
a bottle made of plastic = a plastic bottle
Agentive passives into actives
the young man is released by the police officer = the police officer releases
the young man
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
PARAPHRASES COVERED BY REWRITER
9. REWRITER (V0.1)
INTERFACE FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE
Interactive ReWriter
for word processing applications,
such as text editing
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
10. REWRITER (V0.1)
SUGGESTIONS FOR EXAMPLE SENTENCES
Suggestions for general language
linguistic phenomena
Compound adverbs >
single adverbs
Support verb constructions >
single verbs
Relatives >
participial adjectives
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
11. REWRITER (V0.1)
USER’S CAPABILITY TO ADD NEW
REWRITING OPTIONS
The user can suggest new words or
expressions (synonyms or paraphrases)
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
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12. REWRITER (V0.2)
COMMERCIAL INTERFACE - PROTOTYPE
Users can select among general and technical dictionaries (more than one
selection allowed), grammars for specific linguistic transformations (one, several
or all grammars can be selected). The interface provides sample texts for testing.
Sample LEGAL text
Informative details about the
linguistic resources selected
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
13. REWRITER (V0.2)
COMMERCIAL INTERFACE - PROTOTYPE
Identification of legal terms in the text
Suggestions for the term “breach of law”
Users can select one term on the list of suggestions or provide a new suggestion
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
14. REWRITER (V0.2)
COMMERCIAL INTERFACE - PROTOTYPE
Text rewritten
• In red, the expressions in the source text
• In green, suggestions provided by ReWriter and selected by the user
It is possible to go back and change the
user option as many times as necessary
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
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15. LINGUISTIC RESOURCES USED BY REWRITER
Eng4NooJ – linguistic knowledge database
• OpenLogos dictionary (http://logos-os.dfki.de/) – commercial version
belongs to GROUP Business Software, Germany
• converted into NooJ format, and enhanced with new properties, including
derivational and morpho-syntactic and semantic relations
Allows linguistic annotation and processing of corpora
Instrument for empirical testbed to support theoretical linguistics
research
Basis for language technology applications, including machine
translation between several languages
Sample of Dictionary of Legal Terms
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16. Sample of terms classified
as Information +
Instructional/legal
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LINGUISTIC RESOURCES USED BY REWRITER
17. Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
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NDRV04 = <B>ion/Npred+Nom
ADRV02 = <B>icable
AVDRV01 = <E>ly/ADV
AVDRV04 = <B>tically/ADV
impress,V+FLX=POLISH+SAL=PVPCpleasetype+PT=impressionar+DRV=NDRV01:BOOK+
VSUP=make+VSUP=cause+NPREP=on
aesthetic,AFLX=NATURAL+SAL=AVstate+PT=aesthetically+DRV=AVDRV03
skepticism,N+FLX=BOOK+SAL=ABcause+PT=cepticismo+DRV=NAVDRV02
Grammar to recognize adverbial compounds and
transform them into equivalent single adverbs
Rules to transform
morpho-syntactically
and semantically
related words of
different parts of
speech
General language dictionary entries
LINGUISTIC RESOURCES USED BY REWRITER
Morpho-syntactic
and semantic
relations
18. EVALUATION RESULTS: PARAPHRASING
PRECISION
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
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SVC Recognition
Precision
SVC Recognition
Recall
SVC Paraphrasing
Precision
Pôr 73/73 - 100% 73/100 – 73% 72/73 - 98.6%
Tomar 75/75 - 100% 75/100 – 75% 68/73 - 93.1%
Ter 65/65 - 100% 65/100 – 65% 59/65 - 90.7%
Dar 57/60 - 95% 57/100 – 57% 46/51 - 90.1%
Fazer 43/45 – 95.5% 43/100 – 43% 40/45 - 88.8%
Average 62.6/63.6 - 98.4% 62.6/100 - 62.6% 57/61 - 93.4%
Evaluation of recognition and paraphrasing
of support verb constructions
Corpus of fiction: 500 sentences
100 for each of 5 elementary support verbs
19. EVALUATION RESULTS: IMPACT ON
TRANSLATABILITY (MT)
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
Same corpus, 50 sentences selected randomly
(i) automated pre-processing of support verb constructions with ReWriter and
conversion into equivalent single verbs
(ii) pre-processed sentences (automatically generated paraphrases) and original text
are submitted to MT and the output translations for both original and pre-processed
sentences were compared
• 29 (58%) of the best translations were of automatically generated paraphrases
• 9 (18%) were of support verb constructions
• 12 (24%) were equally bad or equally good
CONCLUSION
The experiment indicates that paraphrases such as those generated by ReWriter
help improve translation scores
• The automated paraphrasing of support verb constructions through ReWriter
allowed a significant improvement of the quality of the MT results in that context
20. TRANSFORMATIONS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE
[Popular versus technical terms]
around the orbit of the eye ≡ periorbital
[If clauses]
if it is necessary ≡ if necessary
[Passives into actives - whenever suitable]
That book was written by Saramago in 2008 > Saramago wrote that book in 2008
Florida was hit by a tornado > A tornado hit Florida
[Coordinated noun phrases - conjoining or disjoining]
linguistic resources for teaching and for research > linguistic resources for teaching and research
[Subjunctive clauses - into infinitives]
we ask the favor that you confirm your attendance > we ask the favor to confirm your attendance
[Marked-up constructions]
if the end-user need is to create controlled language text > if the end-user needs to create
controlled language text
[Vague and undefined or null subject sentences] (whenever the real subject/actor is known)
[-] there was shouting in the street > [N-PRON]/someone shouted in the street
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
21. WHO COULD BENEFIT FROM REWRITER?
Writers in general (searching for synonyms and paraphrases)
Technical writers (searching for the “exact” term)
Editors
MT pre-editors
Translators
Learners of a second language
Students learning language and writing skills
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
22. $EN
FROM REWRITER TO MACHINE
TRANSLATION
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
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a fazer um estágio para dar aulas de / tutor Religião
a fazer um estágio para dar aulas de / lecture Religião
a fazer um estágio para dar aulas de / teach Religião
começa a dar exemplos / exemplify :
sentia-se capaz de dar um murro em / punch quem quisesse detê-lo
gostávamos de lhe dar uma palavrinha / speak .
23. IMPROVEMENT OF REWRITER
Writing (pedagogical) exercises – students learning how to improve
their writing skills in a native or foreign language
Professional writers and translators using (and testing) the
tool, marking [informal], [idiomatic], [slang] and other uses of the
terminology
Detection of errors (words that are not synonyms, or not in a
particular context)
Define linguistic rules to improve precision in specific contexts (e.g.:
[bring(vt)) N(charge; action) > present(vt) N(idem)]
Include “revision memories” (recycling validated reviewed
sentences, structures or phrases)
Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
24. Translating and the Computer Conference 2010
Anabela Barreiro London, 18-19 November 2010
To learn more
on
paraphrases…
Soon to be
released!Anabela Barreiro
ab@metatrad.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
Good afternoon! I’am Anabela Barreiro and I’m presenting ReWriter, a paraphrasing tool designed to help with content writing optimization.
The system includes several dictionaries. The structure of the dictionary is XXX