exam2/q2.tex

   1 \begin{enumerate}[label=\alph*.]
   2         % 2a
   3         \item
   4                 Using the existing (English language) infrastructure to process foreign
   5                 queries might work better than one might expect. A lot of languages
   6                 share linguistic structures with English such as word positioning.
   7                 Moreover a lot of specialised domain words and proper names in foreign
   8                 languages are borrowed from English.
   9
  10                 Of course there are also very major problems. A very big problem would
  11                 be not translating certain (question) words. For example the query
  12                 \emph{Stierf Micheal Jackson in 2009?}. When we put this query in the
  13                 engine it will know that something happened to \emph{MJ} in 2009 but it
  14                 will not know whether that something is the same as what the user
  15                 wanted to ask which leads to confusion.
  16
  17                 Moreover, there are several seemingly simple structural
  18                 divergences (Section 25.1.2) that can cause major problems when not
  19                 translating such as date notation.
  20
  21                 In conclusion, using no translation, when the language is similar to
  22                 English it might yield surprisingly good results. However, when the
  23                 difference is bigger especially the question classification will be
  24                 wrong and that will result into strange answers.
  25
  26         % 2b
  27         \item
  28                 Translated material is hardly ever exactly the same as the original
  29                 materials, it either has more details that were not in the original
  30                 query, less details or wrong details.
  31
  32                 More details can occur because of lexical gaps (Section 25.1.3). Some
  33                 language might have been developed in a region where there hardly any
  34                 fish, such as in the desert, and therefore the need for specialised
  35                 words in fishing was not there. Maybe this language only has one word
  36                 for fish whereas English has many. In this way extra details can be
  37                 inserted. Of course this also works the other way around. A popular,
  38                 dubious statement is often made that some Inu{\"\i}t language has over a
  39                 hundred words for snow. When such a specialised word is used it might
  40                 not be possible to correctly translate it at all to English and
  41                 therefore we lose detail.
  42
  43         % 2c
  44         \item
  45                 The quality of the knowledge extraction depends heavily on the user's
  46                 language because of the aforementioned lexical gaps. However, these
  47                 lexical gaps might be bridged with a suitable translation system.
  48 \end{enumerate}