Accuracy-based scoring for phrase-based statistical machine translation

Although the scoring features of state-of-the-art Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation (PB-SMT) models are weighted so as to optimise an objective function measuring translation quality, the estimation of the features themselves does not have any relation to such quality metrics. In this paper, we introduce a translation quality-based feature to PBSMT in a bid to improve the translation quality of the system. Our feature is estimated by averaging the edit-distance between phrase pairs involved in the translation of oracle sentences, chosen by automatic evaluation metrics from the N-best outputs of a baseline system, and phrase pairs occurring in the N-best list. Using our method, we report a statistically significant 2.11% relative improvement in BLEU score for the WMT 2009 Spanish-to-English translation task. We also report that using our method we can achieve statistically significant improvements over the baseline using many other MT evaluation metrics, and a substantial increase in speed and reduction in memory use (due to a reduction in phrase-table size of 87%) while maintaining significant gains in translation quality

Accuracy-based scoring for DOT: towards direct error minimization for data-oriented translation

In this work we present a novel technique to rescore fragments in the Data-Oriented Translation model based on their contribution to translation accuracy. We describe three new rescoring methods, and present the initial results of a pilot experiment on a small subset of the Europarl corpus. This work is a proof-of-concept, and is the first step in directly optimizing translation decisions solely on the hypothesized accuracy of potential translations resulting from those decisions

Library of Congress Subject Headings in Jewish Studies: Recent Changes (1991–1992)

The following subject headings of interest to Judaica and Hebraica librarians were culled from Library of Congress Weekly Lists nos. 30–51 (1991) and 1–20 (1992). This list continues my earlier one, pub­lished in Judaica Librarianship, vol. 6, no 1–2 (Spring 1991–Winter 1992), pp. 81–93. The list is also an update of my 3rd enlarged and updated edition of Library of Congress Subject Headings in Jewish Studies (New York: Association of Jewish Libraries, 1992)

Optimizing Machine Translation by Learning to Search

We present a novel approach to training discriminative tree-structured machine trans- lation systems by learning to search. We describe three primary innovations in this work: a new parsing coordinator architecture and algorithms to generate the required training examples for the learning algorithm; a new semiring that provides an unbiased way to compare translations; and a new training objective that measures whether a translation inference improves the quality of a translation. We also apply the reinforcement learning concept of exploration to SMT. Finally, we empirically evaluate our innovations

Library of Congress Subject Headings in Jewish Studies: Recent Changes (1992–1994)

The following subject headings of interest to Judaica and Hebraica librarians were culled from Library of Congress Weekly Lists nos. 21–51 (1992) (May 20, 1992–December 16, 1992), 1–51 (1993) (December 30, 1992–December 15, 1993), and 1–5 (1994) (January 5, 1994–February 2, 1994). This list continues my earlier one, published in Judaica Librarianship, vol. 7, no. 1–2 (Spring 1992–Winter 1993), pp. 72–78. This list is also an update of my 4th edition of Library of Congress Subject Headings in Jewish Studies (New York: Association of Jewish Libraries, 1993). The term Jewish Studies is defined broadly and includes Old and New Testament studies, rabbinical literature , Hebrew and other Jewish languages, Hebrew and other Jewish literatures, Jewish history (including history of the Jews in the Diaspora), Israeli history (including current events in the Land of Israel), geography of the Land of Israel, history of the early Near East (Assyria, Babylonia, etc.), and more. The list also includes headings that may b e subdivided with the Religious aspects-Judaism subdivision and with the Religious aspects subdivision that may not be subdivided further