Guy Lapalme’s research while affiliated with Université de Montréal and other places

This paper describes the design principles behind jsRealB, a surface realizer written in JavaScript for English or French sentences from a specification inspired by the constituent syntax formalism. It can be used either within a web page or as a node .js module. We show that the seemingly simple process of text realization involves many interesting implementation challenges in order to take into account the specifics of each language. jsRealB has a large coverage of English and French and has been used to develop realistic data-to-text applications and to reproduce existing literary texts and sentences with Universal Dependency annotations. Its source code and that of its applications are available on GitHub.

For decades, Translation Studies has been perceived not merely as a discipline but rather as an interdiscipline, a trans-disciplinary field operating across a number of boundaries. This has implied and still implies a considerable amount of interaction with other disciplines. There is often much more awareness of and attention to translation and Translation Studies than many translation scholars are aware of. This volume crosses the boundaries to other disciplines and explicitly sets up dialogic formats: every chapter is co-authored both by a specialist from Translation Studies and a scholar from another discipline with a special interest in translation. Sixteen disciplinary dialogues about and around translation are the result, sometimes with expected partners, such as scholars from Computational Linguistics, History and Comparative Literature, but sometimes also with less expected interlocutors, such as scholars from Biosemiotics, Game Localization Research and Gender Studies. The volume not only challenges the boundaries of Translation Studies but also raises issues such as the institutional division of disciplines, the cross-fertilization of a given field, the trends and turns within an interdiscipline.

The web is constantly growing and its documents, getting progressively more dynamic, are well-suited to presentation automation by a text realizer. Current browser-based information display systems have mostly focused on the display and layout of textual data, restricting the generation of nonnumerical informations to canned text or formatted strings. We describe JSreal, a French text realizer implemented in Javascript. It allows its user to build a variety of French expressions and sentences, combined with HTML tags to easily integrate them into web pages to produce dynamic output depending on the content of the page.

In order to help businesses to communicate fruitfully, we present a solution based on ontology alignment for integrating business documents. We focus on detecting and resolving semantic conflicts encountered during the integration process due to different terminologies used in xCBL, cXML and RosettaNet. Our contribution is to benefit from research in the ontology alignment area and considered as empirical study to test if alignment solution can overcome the heterogeneity problems between business systems. As case study, we apply alignment on purchase order ontologies, a common task of the supply chain.

Speaking a language can be an overwhelming task. The message (what to say), its corresponding linguistic expression (how to say it) and sound form (say it, i.e. articulation) have to be determined practically on the fly. To allow for this, parts of the process, in general the mechanical aspects (sentence structures) are automated, that is, they are carried out without requiring attention allowing the speaker to focus on other more important aspects, for example, the message (meaning). Speaking is a skill which has to be learned, and this can be supported in various ways. We propose an enhanced, computerized version of a well-known method: pattern drills. While being highly regarded in the sixties, pattern drills (PD) have become unpopular since then. Despite certain shortcomings we do believe in their virtues, at least with regard to the memorization of basic structures and the acquisition of fluency, the skill to produce language at a 'normal' rate. Of course, the method has to be improved, and we will show here how this can be achieved. Unlike tapes or books, computers are open media, allowing for dynamic changes, taking users' performances and preferences into account. Our drill-tutor, a small web application still in its prototype phase, allows for this. It is a free, electronic version of pattern drills, i.e. an exercise generator, open and adaptable to the users' ever changing needs.