Patent ID: 7752034
Filing Date: 2010-07-06
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method for providing writing assistance to a user, the method comprising: automatically generating a mapping between two strings of text that are in a same language, wherein automatically generating comprises automated generation by a computing device based on statistical or heuristic analysis of the two strings of text relative to a collection of training data, wherein each of the two strings of text is a phrase consisting of more than one word, and wherein analysis of the two strings of text comprises analysis of the two strings of text relative to a collection of native speaker data, the collection of native speaker data comprising pre- and post-editing text samples, pairs of well-formed and deliberately lesioned sentences, aligned sentence pairs collected from paraphrase data, and hand-created correction examples; providing, based at least in part on the mapping, an indication of a style transformation that could be applied to modify at least a portion of input received from the user, wherein the input received from the user comprises words that are completely in the same language as the two strings of text; wherein providing an indication of a style transformation comprises providing a list of suggested substitutions that each represent a potential shift from a first style in a first domain to a second style in a second domain; wherein providing a list comprises providing a list ranked so as to reflect analysis relative to a language model trained based on a collection of well-formed data; wherein each of the suggested substitutions comprises a string of words that is presented completely in the same language as the two strings of text and as the input received from the user; and wherein providing an indication of a style transformation comprises evaluating at least one candidate style transformation relative to a target language model.