English to Bangla Machine Translation System Using Context-Free Grammars
We present a machine translation (MT) system which translates an English sentence into a Bangla sentence of equivalent meaning. We have defined context-free grammars (CFGs) for English simple assertive sentences to discover the syntactic structures of both English and Bangla correct and complete sentences. The CFGs provide the basis for parse rules for rewriting the syntactic structures during bottom-up parsing. A bi-lingual dictionary provides the morphological properties and contextual information of the English words with their corresponding Bangla meaning. The proposed MT system requires transferring English language structure to the corresponding Bangla language structure with an approximate lexical meaning mapping (ALMM) of the English words. The system incorporates a module to verify the accuracy of the constructed Bangla sentence, and allows manual refinement if required. We have implemented a prototype of this system, and have applied to a large number of simple assertive sentences, which shows promising results.
Keywords: Syntactic Structure, Parse Rules, Bottom-up Parsing, Syntactic Transfer, Bi-lingual Dictionary, Approximate Lexical Meaning Mapping
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Shibli Syeed Ashrafi
Shibli Syeed Ashrafi graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is working at UCBL, Gulshan 2, Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research interests include Machine Translation, Database Systems and so on.
Md. Humayun Kabir
Md. Humayun Kabir graduated from Dhaka University, Bangladesh in Applied Physics and Electronics in 1991, and completed his Postgraduate degree in Computer Science in 1992 from the same University. He received his Ph.D from the School of Computing, Dublin City University, Ireland in 2007 in the area of formal software development. He is currently the Chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also an Associate Professor in the same Department. His research interests include Program Transformation, Program Verification, Automatic Program Construction, OO Software Engineering, Machine Translation, Data Mining and so on.
Md. Musfique Anwar
Md. Musfique Anwar completed his B. Sc (Hons.) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2006. He is now a Lecturer (on study leave) in the Dept. of CSE, Jahangirnagar University. He is doing his MS in Japan. His research interests include Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Software Engineering and so on.
A. K. M. Noman
A. K. M. Noman graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has completed his Postgraduate degree from the same Department. He is working at Purbani Group, Gulshan 1, Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research interests include Machine Translation, Database Systems and so on.
Shibli Syeed Ashrafi
Shibli Syeed Ashrafi graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is working at UCBL, Gulshan 2, Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research interests include Machine Translation, Database Systems and so on.
Md. Humayun Kabir
Md. Humayun Kabir graduated from Dhaka University, Bangladesh in Applied Physics and Electronics in 1991, and completed his Postgraduate degree in Computer Science in 1992 from the same University. He received his Ph.D from the School of Computing, Dublin City University, Ireland in 2007 in the area of formal software development. He is currently the Chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also an Associate Professor in the same Department. His research interests include Program Transformation, Program Verification, Automatic Program Construction, OO Software Engineering, Machine Translation, Data Mining and so on.
Md. Musfique Anwar
Md. Musfique Anwar completed his B. Sc (Hons.) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2006. He is now a Lecturer (on study leave) in the Dept. of CSE, Jahangirnagar University. He is doing his MS in Japan. His research interests include Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Software Engineering and so on.
A. K. M. Noman
A. K. M. Noman graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has completed his Postgraduate degree from the same Department. He is working at Purbani Group, Gulshan 1, Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research interests include Machine Translation, Database Systems and so on.
