Automatic translation of Arabic queries for bilingual information retrieval

Abstract

In this paper, we present an automatic query translation in Arabic for information retrieval. This system, implements a method for lexical disambiguation of terms in a query. To choose the best sense, each term of the query is projected on the French EuroWordNet and we extract his related concepts in order to form a semantic network. In a second time using the same type of network, but by integrating LSI (Latent Semantic Index), and extraction of contextual hidden links between the concepts of the list (listSRF). This list extracted by the automatic alignment by Mkalign tool's, from the knowledge base defined by the Monde Diplomatic parallel corpus. This tool will allow us to map between the relevant sentences in Arabic identified in our previous work with French sentences to build a listSRF. This list forms the basis of the lexical disambiguation method. Finally, we propose a mechanism for selecting the best sense of the ambiguous term of the query, based on the matching between each network corresponds to a word in the query with the network listSRF to extract an adequate sense with the highest degree of similarity. An evaluation and comparison are conducted to measure the quality of our translation system.