Language identification from short strings

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016357728-A1
Application number	US-201514845180-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Sep 3, 2015
Priority date	Jun 4, 2015
Publication date	Dec 8, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

Systems and processes for language identification from short strings are provided. In accordance with one example, a method includes, at a first electronic device with one or more processors and memory, receiving user input including an n-gram and determining a similarity between a representation of the n-gram and a representation of a first language. The representation of the first language is based on an occurrence of each of a plurality of n-grams in the first language and an occurrence of each of the plurality of n-grams in a second language. The method further includes determining whether the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language satisfies a threshold.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing one or more programs, the one or more programs comprising instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, cause the electronic device to:
receive user input including an n-gram; determine a similarity between a representation of the n-gram and a representation of a first language, wherein the representation of the first language is based on an occurrence of each of a plurality of n-grams in the first language and an occurrence of each of the plurality of n-grams in a second language; and determine whether the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language satisfies a threshold.

2 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein determining the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language includes determining a proximity of a spatial representation of the n-gram to a spatial representation of the first language.

3 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the representation of the first language is based on a respective indexing power of each of the plurality of n-grams.

4 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, further cause the electronic device to:
in accordance with a determination that the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language satisfies the threshold, select the first language.

5 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, further cause the electronic device to:
in accordance with a determination that the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language does not satisfy the threshold, display a first affordance that, when activated, causes the first language to be selected; and display a second affordance that, when activated, causes the second language to be selected.

6 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 , wherein the instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, further cause the electronic device to:
in response to the selection of the second affordance, adjust the representation of the second language.

7 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, further cause the electronic device to:
determine whether the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language is greater than a similarity between the representation of the n-gram and a representation of the second language.

8 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the n-gram is a first n-gram and wherein the instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, further cause the electronic device to:
receive user input including a second n-gram; and select the second language based on the second n-gram.

9 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the n-gram is a character n-gram.

10 . A method, comprising:
at an electronic device with one or more processors and memory:
receiving user input including an n-gram;
determining a similarity between a representation of the n-gram and a representation of a first language, wherein the representation of the first language is based on an occurrence of each of a plurality of n-grams in the first language and an occurrence of each of the plurality of n-grams in a second language; and
determining whether the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language satisfies a threshold.

11 . An electronic device, comprising:
one or more processors; a memory; and one or more programs, wherein the one or more programs are stored in the memory and configured to be executed by the one or more processors, the one or more programs including instructions for:
receiving user input including an n-gram;
determining a similarity between a representation of the n-gram and a representation of a first language, wherein the representation of the first language is based on an occurrence of each of a plurality of n-grams in the first language and an occurrence of each of the plurality of n-grams in a second language; and
determining whether the similarity between the representation of the n-gram and the representation of the first language satisfies a threshold.

Assignees

• Apple Inc

Inventors

• Bellegarda Jerome R
• Barman Bishal

Classifications

• G06F40/263 Primary

  Language identification · CPC title

• G10L15/26

  Speech to text systems (G10L15/08 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F40/30

  Semantic analysis · CPC title

• G06F40/58

  Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation · CPC title

• G06F17/275 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic