Development of an Asymptotic Word Correspondence
System between Classical Japanese Poems and theirModern Translations
Hilofumi Yamamoto∗†

Hajime Murai†

Bor Hodošček‡∗ University of California, San Diego †Tokyo Institute of Technology‡Meiji UniversityIntroduction• This project will develop an automatic word concordance system for parallel texts comprising of Classical Japanese
poems and their associated modern translations.
• By using these parallel texts, we will clarify the details of language change within Japanese in an objective proceduralmanner that is not influenced by human observations.
• Our aim is to develop a thesaurus of classical Japanese poetic vocabulary using the system.

ProblemWhat is Waka?

1. Orthography Problem
龍田, 立田, 竜田, たつた all indicate same placename: ‘Tatsuta’ in Nara pref.

Tatsuta-Hime.. (5 syllables)
tamukuru KAMI no (7)arebakoso (5)aki no konoha no (7)nusa to chirurame (7)2. Unit size Problem
Does 卯の花 consist of one word or 卯/の/花 three words?

because Princess Tatsuta
has a god to whom she offers brocades,
the leaves of trees
in autumn will scatter as an offering.

3. Attribution Problem
Is 卯の花 the name of a flower or bean curd refuse?
4. Polysemy/PUN Problem
海松藻 ‘mirume’ a kind of sea weed; also means 見る目 (human eyes).

Methods
Material: Kokinshū

a.k.a. Kokinwakashū is:the first anthology compiled by the order of Emperor Daigo(ca. 905), which contains about 1,100 poems. And 10 sets of
their Comtemporary Japanese Translations (CT)1940

mcr(o, t) = p(o | t) p(t | o)

SaeK ki (ub 1ot 958a )•(1960)
M◦⊳atO sudza aTa wa (196k (O eok 197 8)◦k a 1 ⊳K um (1 )◦⊳yū ur 97
K so j a (1 6)◦om in 9 ⊳ac (1 78)
hi 97 ◦⊳ya 9)(1 ◦⊳K98ojim2)◦⊳a&Arai(1K98at9)Yu agir◦⊳sa i (1(2 9900 8)0) ◦⊳◦aneko(1K92
an7)
K ek
◦
ub oot (19a 33(1 )93 ◦⊳5)◦K

1930

Figure 1:

Mutual Co-occurrence Rate: Murai (2010)

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Dates of publication of annotations of the Kokinshū:◦ indicates that it has CT; • indicates that it does notinclude CT; ▷ indicates that it is used in this project.

where, o indicates a token in original texts; t, a token in translation texts; mcr(o, t), the mutual cooccurrence rate; p(o|t), the rate when a token o and t
occur at the same time in corresponding texts which
are original texts and translation texts.
→ when mcr is large enough, it will be estimated thattoken o and t are contextually equivalent.

Result2

1.6
1.4
rank of mcr value

Good or poor estimated pairs

KanekoKubotaMatsudaOzawa
TakeokaOkumuraKyusojin
Komachiya
Kojima-AraiKatagiri

1.8

Table 1: Good estimated pairs and poor estimated pairs;
the values of good pairs are the first ten items(over 1.3); and the values of poor pair items
are the last ten items (lower 0.01).

1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
00

Figure 2:

100

200

300

400
500
mcr value

600

700

800

900

Distribution of Mutual Co-occurrence Rate: originaltext Kokinshū and ten sets of its translation texts.

no.
1
2
3
4
5
678
910

good
鳴く風世の中人春
秋
時鳥
時鳥散る見るpairs
鳴く cry風 wind世の中
人 human春 spring
秋 autumn
時鳥 cuckoo
ほととぎす
散る fall
見る seepoor
異なり雫
此の随に匂ふ見る連れ立ち返る有り有り

pairs
あのどうしてこのまま美しいせい
つく
言うつく
まさしくConclusion
1. This project has already begun: the parallel corpus of the Kokinshū has been constructed.
2. We are now working on the development of computer software and the optimization of the calculation methods.

Reference• Murai, Hajime. 2010 Extracting the interpretive characteristics of translations based on the asymptotic correspondence vocabulary
presumption method: Quantitative comparisons of Japanese translations of the Bible. Journal of Japan Society of Information andKnowledge Vol. 20, No. 3, 293–310.