Applied to General Language

ReWriter can use our linguistic resources to paraphrase and pre-edit texts to support controlled language in general domains. Using controlled language brings several advantages: consistency, maintainability and control, and translatability. People often write without paying enough attention to consistency. It is common to find texts that are inconsistent regarding syntactic structures, voice, tense, style, etc. For example, consistently converting all the support verb constructions to verbs, makes the style of the text more direct, often brings improvement in meaning precision and changes the mood in the text from vague to instructive. In today’s information society, maintainability of Internet multilingual sites, marketing information, and user manuals, is complex and important. Nowadays, texts must be written so that they can easily be updated. Controlled language helps maintain texts more easily and also permits easier and better control of language. And finally, one of the main characteristics of controlled language is its translatability, i.e., the writing of more easily translatable text. Nowadays, translatability is often a key requirement of text. There are many instances where the writer uses words that do not add to the meaning. Any process that reduces the number of words without sacrificing the meaning will reduce noise in the message. This facilitates machine translation. Presenting simplified paraphrases for certain linguistic phenomena, tends to render the text easier to understand and closer to "machine translation ready", that is, easier and more accurately translatable.

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Controlled language that includes paraphrasal knowledge also provides significantly more coverage in the control of style. If used to pre-edit, it can produce superior quality machine translation output that meets the needs of the linguistic resource user.

Support verb constructions can be paraphrased and translated by other support verb constructions or by verbs. In the cases where the support verb construction can be replaced by a full verb, such as in dar um passeio (to take/go for a walk) (cf. (1)), morpho- syntactically and semantically equivalent to the verb ‘passear => to walk’ (cf. (2)), paraphrasal knowledge can be very useful. Comparing the two types of expression, we notice that the two extra words, the support verb and the determiner, add little or no meaning to the phrase, to the point that some translators decide not to even use them.

(1) E depois vai dar um passeio por aí, (…) [CdP]

=> And then (s)he is going to go for a walk around, (…) (2) Quando você acabar, vamos passear por aí. [CdP]

=> When you finish, we will go for a walk.

A machine translation system needs to understand support verb constructions so that it processes them with quality, precision and minimum loss of meaning. This research focused on support verb constructions, however, this phenomenon holds true for additional types of expressions that can be paraphrased and simplified. We expect that it will be possible to repeat the present study, using other categories of paraphrase, so that coverage of paraphrases can become more complete. The methodology adopted in the current research can straightforwardly extend to relative clauses, ‘if’ clauses, some passives and passive negation clauses, among others. A few examples of different types of linguistic phenomena where paraphrasing is useful and ReWriter could help to control the writing are listed below. Some types of corrections are standard practice in (human) revision.

[Paraphrasing adverbials]

à volta da órbita ≡ periorbital (popular versus technical) around the orbit of the eye ≡ periorbital

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N0 que têm sido escritos ≡ N0 que foram descritos ≡N0 escritos N0 that have been written ≡ N0 that were described ≡ N0 written

[Paraphrasing if clauses]

se for necessário ≡ se necessário if it is necessary ≡ if necessary

[Paraphrasing coordinated noun phrases - conjoining or disjoining] recursos linguísticos para o ensino e para a investigação Ŧ ?linguistic resources for teaching and for research ≡ recursos linguísticos para o ensino e a investigação Ŧ linguistic resources for teaching and research

[Paraphrasing subjunctive clauses - into infinitives]

pedimos o favor que confirme a sua participação Ŧ *we ask the favor that you confirm your attendance ≡ pedimos o favor de confirmar a sua participação Ŧ *we ask the favor of confirming your attendance

[Paraphrasing marked-up constructions]

se a necessidade do utilizador é criar um texto em linguagem controlada Ŧ ?if the end-user need is to create controlled language text

≡ se o utilizador necessita de criar um texto em linguagem controlada Ŧ if the end-user needs to create controlled language text

[Paraphrasing of vague and undefined or null subject sentences] (whenever the real subject/actor is known)

[-] houve um grito na rua ≡ [N-PRON]/alguém gritou na rua

Ŧ there was shouting in the street ≡ [N-PRON]/someone shouted in the street

[Paraphrasing passives - whenever suitable]

Esse livro foi escrito por Saramago em 2008 ≡ Saramago escreveu esse livro em 2008 That book was written by Saramago in 2008 ≡ Saramago wrote that book in 2008 Florida foi atingida por um tornado ≡ Um tornado atingiu a Florida

Florida was hit by a tornado ≡ A tornado hit Florida O carro foi roubado ≡ Alguém roubou o carro The car was stolen ≡ Someone stole the car

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A formal linguistic study of paraphrases of this kind in particular represents a significant contribution to natural language processing in general, and to machine translation in particular, and benefits verification of translation quality overall.

The concept of interchangeability of text has only become a reality since people understood the mechanism of text editing on a personal computer. Ease of editing has brought a new way of looking at text, as flexible and editable. With this prior concept firmly embedded in the mind, the ability to select suitable paraphrases helps improve the skill of the editor.