Data processing: speech signal processing – linguistics – language – Linguistics – Translation machine
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-06
2001-02-20
Hudspeth, David R. (Department: 2741)
Data processing: speech signal processing, linguistics, language
Linguistics
Translation machine
C704S010000, C704S277000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06192332
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a handheld electronic device which translates phrases from a source language to a target language via lookup in a translation table, and more particularly to one which possesses the capability to record its translation failures in a non-volatile memory, and establish Internet connections with a central maintenance site so as to update its translation table in such a way as to reduce translation failures in the future.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Travellers in a foreign country who do not speak the local language typically rely on conventional printed phrase books to be able to communicate with the natives of said foreign country. Flipping through the pages of a phrase book to find a desired phrase, however, can be frustrating for both the speaker and the listener, both of whom are accustomed to considerably faster conversational rates. In addition, once the speaker finds the desired phrase in the phrase book, said speaker may experience difficulty in pronouncing the phrase in a comprehensible way.
The aforementioned shortcomings of printed phrase books have led to the development of electronic phrase books or translation devices, which allow the user to directly enter a phrase to be translated either via a hand-operated input device, such as a keyboard, or by speaking into a microphone connected to a speech-recognition system. Regardless of the input device being utilized, the user is able to directly specify the phrase to be translated, thereby relegating to the translation device the tedious chore of looking up the phrase in a translation table. In addition, certain electronic translation devices include means for reading their translations aloud via a speech-synthesis system connected to a loudspeaker, thereby alleviating any potential difficulties on the part of the user in pronouncing the phrases intelligibly. One example of an electronic phrase book is the Voice Language Translator described by Rondel et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,177, granted Jan. 8, 1991. This voice language translator includes means for recognizing a phrase spoken by the user, for looking up the phrase in a translation table, and for speaking aloud the resulting translation of the phrase.
It is important to realize, however, that all existing phrase books, whether printed or electronic, suffer from a common, severe flaw: they often fail to contain the phrases that users wish to say. For example, one may find oneself in a department store in a foreign country, and in search of a cash register at which to make one's purchase; but few phrase books provide a translation for the natural phrase to utter in this context, namely, “Where's the nearest cash register?”. A multitude of other seemingly natural phrases are absent from surprisingly many phrase books, such as, “Where is the nearest ATM?”, “Is it on the Star system?”, “Do you have change for a 100-franc note?”, “Is there a gym nearby?”, “How much is a weekly pass?”, “Do you have skim milk?”, “How do I get to the Olympic Village?”, “What time do the games start?”, and so on. From the point of view of the author of the phrase book, it is extremely difficult to correctly anticipate the most common, say, 1000 phrases that travellers will need. The difficulty stems from two sources: first, it is difficult to predict what sorts of activities and artifacts travellers generally talk about. Second, travellers' communicative needs change over time, particularly in the face of new events, such as the Olympics, and new tourist attractions, such as a new Disney theme park.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
The present invention addresses the difficulty of anticipating which phrases will be needed by utilizing a translation table that can be continually modified or updated in response to translation failures. Thus it no longer becomes critical to identify the 1000 most commonly used phrases. The device may be programmed with any set of phrases initially, for example, the set of phrases found in a conventional paper phrase book. Then, during usage, the device records all cases in which the user asks for the translation of a phrase that is not in the book. These translation failures are later uploaded to a central maintenance site, where human translators provide translations for the most frequently-requested phrases. These updates are in turn downloaded to the device, thereby bringing the set of phrases known by the phrase book into alignment with the set of phrases that have been observed in actual practice to be most needed by users.
Travellers and others utilize the subject system to translate a phrase through the following procedure: The user specifies, via an input device, a phrase in the source language to be translated by the system. The system looks up the phrase in a translation table. If the phrase is not found, the system reports failure, otherwise the system displays for the user the one or more translations of the phrase that are found in said table. If the user accepts one of the translations, the system returns the accepted translation via an output device, otherwise the system reports failure. The system records all failures in an error table, which resides in non-volatile memory. The system additionally records all successful translations by keeping a usage count for each translation in non-volatile memory. The user may, at any time, establish an Internet connection between the system and a central maintenance site for the purpose of receiving updates to the system's translation table. During the connection, the central maintenance site, in addition to downloading updates to the system's translation table, also uploads the system's aforementioned error table and usage counts. The central maintenance site is thereby able to maintain statistics, aggregated over all instances of the system, about which translations not already present in the translation table are most strongly needed, and which translations already present in the translation table are most superfluous. These statistics are utilized in deciding which translations to include in subsequent updates, and which translations to remove to make room for new translations in the translation table.
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Brinkman Dirk
Hudspeth David R.
Lerner Martin
Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Inc.
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