Daqing He

Research Scientist/Adjunct Faculty
Computational Linguistics and Information Processing Laboratory (CLIP)
Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS)
University of Maryland College Park

“FACILITATING INFORMATION ACCESS BEYOND LANGUAGE BARRIERS"

Tuesday, March 30, 2004
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Room 405, IS Building

Abstract: Interactive Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) is a process in which the user and a retrieval system collaborate in finding documents that satisfy the information need, regardless of the language in which those documents are written. Translating information between the query language and the document language is the key technology employed in CLIR. Due to the complexity of human languages, translation ambiguities are inevitable, and usually greatly reduce the retrieval effectiveness of a CLIR system if they are not handled properly.

In this presentation, I will talk about the design of the user-assisted query translation approach, which is superior to previous automatic disambiguation approaches in that it invites the user to participate in the translation disambiguation process. The aim is to construct a synergic relation between the user and the retrieval system. We demonstrate the usefulness of the approach in the usability experiments we conducted at the University of Maryland. I will also briefly introduce my research interests in the area of information access at the end of the presentation.