Leiden University Student Repository

Edelenbos, Stuart Michael (2016)

"I know the man you saw yesterday not" - Improving Statistical Machine Translation on Negation from Dutch-to-English

Master thesis | Linguistics (MA)

Today, various translation applications exist which are used daily by millions of people. However useful these applications are, occasionally they fail to deliver adequate translations. This paper explains how applications following Statistical Machine Translation methods would translate negation in sentences from Dutch to English, why this can lead to inadequate translations, and compares these findings with how different theoretical linguistic frameworks approach negation. The paper ends with a suggestion that, as theoretical linguistic frameworks show, using statistics alone is not sufficient when translating negation in sentences from Dutch to English.

Statistical Machine Translation

Translation

Negation

Dutch

English

Google Translate

Author

Edelenbos, Stuart Michael

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

MA English Linguistics & Language

Supervisors

Cremers, C.L.J.M.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en