Translation by understanding: a machine translation system LUTE

This paper presents a linguistic model for language understanding and describes its application to an experimental machine translation system called LUTE. The language understanding model is an interactive model between the memory structure and a text. The memory structure is hierarchical and represented in a frame-network. Linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge is stored and the result of understanding the text is assimilated into the memory structure. The understanding process is interactive in that the text invokes knowledge and the understanding proceduro interprets the text by using that knowledge. A linguistic model, called the Extended Case Structure model, is defined by adopting three kinds of information: structure, relation and concept. These three are used recursively and iteratively as the basis for memory organization. These principles are applied to the design and implementation of the LUTE which translates Japanese into English and vice vorsa.