Providing multi-lingual searching of mono-lingual content

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9418158-B2
Application number	US-201414528400-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 30, 2014
Priority date	Jul 6, 2012
Publication date	Aug 16, 2016
Grant date	Aug 16, 2016

Abstract

Approaches for translating a transliterated search query are provided. An approach includes receiving a search query containing a transliterated word. The approach also includes determining a source language corresponding to the transliterated word. The approach further includes converting the transliterated word to a word in the source language. The approach additionally includes translating the word in the source language to a word in a target language. The approach also includes performing a search using the word in the target language.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method implemented in a computer infrastructure, comprising:
receiving a search query containing one or more transliterated words;
determining a source language corresponding to a particular transliterated word of the one or more transliterated words, wherein the determining the source language is based solely on the particular transliterated word, wherein the determining the source language comprises:
determining a weighted score for each one of a plurality of candidate languages, and designating the candidate language with the highest weighted score as the source language;
converting the particular transliterated word to a word in the source language;
translating the word in the source language to a word in a target language;
performing a search using the word in the target language; and
displaying, by a user computer device, search results in the target language.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the performing the search comprises submitting the word in the target language to an Internet search engine.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the Internet search engine is indexed in the target language.

4. The method of claim 2 , further comprising receiving search results from the Internet search engine based on the performing the search using the word in the target language.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the search results are in the target language.

6. The method of claim 5 , further comprising translating the search results, received from the Internet search engine, from the target language to the source language.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the search query is received from a user computer device, and further comprising transmitting the translated search results in the source language to the user computer device.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining the source language is performed automatically without a user specifying the source language.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the converting the particular transliterated word to the word in the source language is based on visually analogous transliteration.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the visually analogous transliteration comprises comparing a shape of a letter of the particular transliterated word to a shape of a letter in the source language.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the converting the particular transliterated word to the word in the source language is based on a combination of visually analogous transliteration and phonetically analogous transliteration.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the search query contains the particular transliterated word and a non-transliterated word.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more transliterated words comprises a first transliterated word and the search query contains a second transliterated word, and further comprising:
determining a second source language corresponding to the second transliterated word;
converting the second transliterated word to a word in the second source language;
translating the word in the second source language to a second word in the target language; and
performing the search using the word in the target language and the second word in the target language.

14. A system implemented in hardware, comprising:
a computer system comprising a processor executing a translation engine that is configured to:
receive a search query containing one or more transliterated words;
determine a source language corresponding to a particular transliterated word of the one or more transliterated words, wherein the determining the source language is based solely on the particular transliterated word, wherein the determining the source language comprises:
determining a weighted score for each one of a plurality of candidate languages, and designating the candidate language with the highest weighted score as the source language;
convert the particular transliterated word to a word in the source language;
translate the word in the source language to a word in a target language;
submit the word in the target language to an Internet search engine that is indexed in the target language;
receive search results in the target language, wherein the search results are based on the submitting the word in the target language to the Internet search engine;
translate the search results, received from the Internet search engine, in the target language to search results in the source language; and
displaying the search results in the source language.

15. The system of claim 14 , wherein the converting the particular transliterated word to the word in the source language is based on visually analogous transliteration that comprises comparing a shape of a letter in the particular transliterated word to shapes of letters in the determined source language.

16. A method of deploying a system for translating a transliterated search query, comprising:
receive a search query from a user computer device, wherein the search query contains one or more transliterated words;
determine a source language corresponding to a particular transliterated word of the one or more transliterated words by determining a weighted score for each one of a plurality of candidate languages, solely on the particular transliterated word;
convert the particular transliterated word to a word in the source language;
translate the word in the source language to a word in a target language;
submit the word in the target language to a search engine that is indexed in the target language;
receive search results in the target language, wherein the search results are based on the submitting the word in the target language to a search engine;
translate the search results in the target language to search results in the source language; and
transmit the search results in the source language to the user computer device to cause the user computer device to display the search results in the source language.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein the weighted score for each one of the plurality of candidate languages is based on:
correlating user-entered words against language-specific dictionaries;
environmental variables;
location-based services; and
user profile and/or history.

18. The method of claim 16 , wherein the converting the particular transliterated word to the word in the source language is based on visually analogous transliteration.

19. The method of claim 16 , wherein the weighted score for each one of the plurality of candidate languages is based on environmental variables that include data a browser.

20. The method of claim 1 , wherein the weighted score for each one of the plurality of candidate languages is based on:
correlating user-entered words against language-specific dictionaries; and
environmental variables.

21. The method of claim 1 , wherein the weighted score for each one of the plurality of candidate languages is based on:
correlating user-entered words against language-specific dictionaries; and
location-based services.

22. The method of claim 1 , wherein the weighted score for each one of the plurality of candidate languages is based on:
correlating user-entered words against language-specific dictionaries; and
user profile and/or history.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Caskey Sasha P
• Hamilton Ii Rick A
• Kanevsky Dimitri
• Sainath Tara N

Classifications

• G06F16/3337

  Translation of the query language, e.g. Chinese to English · CPC title

• G06F40/129

  Handling non-Latin characters, e.g. kana-to-kanji conversion · CPC title

• G06F16/951 Primary

  Indexing; Web crawling techniques · CPC title

• G06F40/58 Primary

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

• G06F17/30669

  Physics · mapped topic