Improving translation quality stability using Bayesian predictive adaptation

[EN] We introduce a Bayesian approach for the adaptation of the log-linear weights present in state-of-the-art statistical machine translation systems. Typically, these weights are estimated by optimising a given translation quality criterion, taking only into account a certain set of development da...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Sanchis Trilles, Germán, Casacuberta Nolla, Francisco|||0000-0002-8497-5598
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/63537
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/63537
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Bayesian method
Adaptation
Natural language processing
Machine translation
LENGUAJES Y SISTEMAS INFORMATICOS
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] We introduce a Bayesian approach for the adaptation of the log-linear weights present in state-of-the-art statistical machine translation systems. Typically, these weights are estimated by optimising a given translation quality criterion, taking only into account a certain set of development data (e.g., the adaptation data). In this article, we show that the Bayesian framework provides appropriate estimates of such weights in conditions where adaptation data is scarce. The theoretical framework is presented, alongside with a thorough experimentation and comparison with other weight estimation methods. We provide a comparison of different sampling strategies, including an effective heuristic strategy and a theoretically sound Markov chain Monte-Carlo algorithm. Experimental results show that Bayesian predictive adaptation (BPA) outperforms the re-estimation from scratch in conditions where adaptation data is scarce. Further analysis reveals that the improvements obtained are due to the greater stability of the estimation procedure. In addition, the proposed BPA framework has a much lower computational cost than raw re-estimation. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.