A Survey of Multilingual Text Retrieval

Abstract

This report reviews the present state of the art in selection of texts in one language based on queries in another, a problem we refer to as ``multilingual'' text retrieval. Present applications of multilingual text retrieval systems are limited by the cost and complexity of developing and using the multilingual thesauri on which they are based and by the level of user training that is required to achieve satisfactory search effectiveness. A general model for multilingual text retrieval is used to review the development of the field and to describe modern production and experimental systems. The report concludes with some observations on the present state of the art and an extensive bibliography of the technical literature on multilingual text retrieval. The research reported herein was supported, in part, by Army Research Office contract DAAL03-91-C-0034 through Battelle Corporation, NSF NYI IRI-9357731, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow Award BR3336, and a General Research Board Semester Award. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-96-19)