DEIM Forum 2016 E6-4

An Approach to Build a Proper Noun Dictionary for Record Linkage acrossHumanities Databases in Different Languages
Yuting SONG† Taisuke KIMURA† Biligsaikhan BATJARGAL‡ Akira MAEDA‡††Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University
1-1-1 Noji-higashi, Kusatsu, Shiga 525-8577 Japan‡Research Organization of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University
1-1-1 Noji-higashi, Kusatsu, Shiga 525-8577 Japan‡†College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University
1-1-1 Noji-higashi, Kusatsu, Shiga 525-8577 Japan
E-mail: †{gr0260ff, is0013hh}@ ed.ritsumei.ac.jp, ‡biligee@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp, ‡†amaeda@is.ritsumei.ac.jp
Abstract This paper proposes a method to build a proper noun dictionary that contains proper noun and its transliterated
word pairs, which can be used for record linkage across humanities databases in different languages. This method is based on
an observation that the corresponding word of a proper noun in a target language is almost the same as transliteration of thatproper noun. In this paper, the proposed method is demonstrated on Ukiyo-e databases in Japanese (source language) andEnglish (target language). We extract transliterated words from the titles of Ukiyo-e prints in English and back-transliteratethem into their original Japanese words by using a kanji dictionary and Ukiyo-e related dictionaries and encyclopedias. Finally,
we evaluate how the newly built proper noun dictionary affects the accuracy of record linkage between Ukiyo-e databases inJapanese and English.
Keyword Cross-language record linkage, Digital library, Japanese art, Humanities databases
libraries, museums and organizations in Japan as well as

1. Introduction
Cross-Language Record Linkage is a task of finding thein other countries hold numerous Ukiyo-e prints. Thesepairs of records that refer to the same entity acrossprints have been digitized and exhibited on the Internet

multiple databases in different languages. In this task, thewith textual metadata in different languages [4]. As shown

metadata elements of a record in original language need toin the red boxes of Figure 1 and Figure 2, the same

be translated into the target language in order to match

Ukiyo-e prints have different titles, e.g. Japanese title orrecords in that language. Proper nouns in the metadata

English translated title. Thus, it is suitable to demonstrateelements, such as personal names, place names, are more

our proposed method on Ukiyo-e databases in Japanese

representative features than other words. However, it isand English. Besides, we use the titles of Ukiyo-e prints

difficult to obtain proper nouns and their corresponding

for the task of identifying the same prints between thetransliterations by dictionary lookup because they are

databases in Japanese and English because the title is aoften

more definite metadata element than others, such as year

domainspecific

andobsoleted,especiallyinhumanities areas.

of creation, published place, etc. In this task, the titles ofThis paper proposes a method to build a proper nounUkiyo-e prints in Japanese (source language) need to be

dictionary that contains proper noun and its transliterated

translated into English (target language) to match theword pairs, which can be used for record linkage [1][2][3]prints in English.

across humanities databases in different languages. Thismethod is based on an observation that the corresponding
word of a proper noun in a target language is almost thesame as transliteration of that proper noun.
In this paper, we use Ukiyo-e databases in Japanese andEnglish to demonstrate the proposed method. The Ukiyo-e,Japanese traditional woodblock printing, is known as oneof the popular arts of the Edo period (1603-1868). Many

Figure 1. An example of the Edo-Tokyo Museum

“野 ” (“小 野 ” is a place name). Besides, “o” and “no” canshare one corresponding Japanese kanji “斧 ” (an axe).

ono

ク

リ

ー

ム

↓

↓

↓

↓

o

no

Figure 2. An example of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

ku

ri

i

mu

↓

↓

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.

↓

↓

↓

↓

お

の

c

re

a

m

Section 2 introduces the related work for acquisition oforiginal word and its transliterated word pairs in several

creamlanguages. The proposed method is described in Section 3.
Experimental setup and evaluation of the performance arepresented in Section 4. Finally, the conclusion follows in

お の

おの

↓ ↓

↓

小 野

斧

Figure 3. Examples of the back-transliteration between

Section 5.

an English word and a Japanese foreign word
and

the

back-transliteration

betweenaJapanese word and English transliterated word

2. Related WorkIn the past, much research has been conducted for
acquisition of original word and its transliterated wordpairs in many languages, such as English and Chinese [5]3. Proposed method
In the proposed method, we identify proper nouns by[6], English and Korean [7] [8], as well as English andhypothesizing

Japanese [9]. In most approaches, they focus on thetransliterated words in the target language are proper

that

the

corresponding

words

of

transliteration

betweennouns. Based on this idea, firstly, we extract transliterated

English words and foreign words (e.g. English loanwords

words from the English titles of Ukiyo-e prints. In thisin Japanese), in which English is the source language andstep, we identify transliterated words by a language

non-English languages are the targets.

dictionary lookup since transliterated words are not

and

the

back-transliteration

However, the proposed method in this paper aims toalways appeared in a language dictionary, especially inobtain non-English word and its corresponding English

humanities areas where proper nouns are domain-specifictransliterated word pairs, in which non-English language

or obsoleted. Then, the next step is to convert theseis the source and English is the target language. This task

transliterated words into their corresponding words inis more challenging than the back-transliteration between

Japanese. This back-transliteration process is to recover

English words and foreign words, since each character ofthe original words from transliterated words. After that,

foreign words can be corresponded to one or more English

candidate proper noun and its transliterated word pairs areletters of corresponding English words. However, in the

post-processed in order to build a more accurate propertask of the back-transliteration between non-English

noun dictionary. The process of back-transliteration andwords and English transliterated words, several letters inpost-processing will be described in details in the next

English transliterated word can be represented as a single

subsection. The overall process is summarized in Figure 4.

non-English character. Some examples are shown in
Figure 3.
The example on the left side of Figure 3 illustrates the

3.1 Back-transliteration
For building a proper noun dictionary that contains

back-transliteration from loanword “ ク リ ー ム ” inproper

noun

and

its

transliterated

word

pairs,

Japanese to English word “cream”. In this process, eachtransliterated words in English are needed to be converted

katakana character corresponds to one or more English

to their original words in Japanese. This process is called

letters. For example, “ク ” corresponds to “c” in English

back-transliteration

that

is

the

reverseprocessofword “cream”. However, the right side illustrates thetransliteration. For example, transliterated word “sumida”

back-transliteration from English transliterated word “ono”

in English is needed to be converted back to “隅 田 ” (theto its corresponding Japanese words. In this example, “o”

name of a river) in Japanese.

and “no” have their corresponding Japanese kanji “小 ” andsequences “す み だ が わ ” of the entries “隅 田 川 － す み だ

The titles of Ukiyo-e
prints in English

が わ ” for obtaining its corresponding Japanese word “隅田 ”.

Transliterated words
identification

3.2 Post-processing
In the back-transliteration process, most transliterated
words can be converted into one or more original Japanese

Back-transliteration

words

Candidate proper noun & its
transliterated word pairs

that

might

be

propernouns.

Among247

transliterated words in our experimental result (theexperiment will be described in details in Section 4), 138

Post-processingwords(55.9%)

have

more

than

one

corresponding

Japanese words. However, some of them are ordinary
Japanese words which are not proper nouns. For example,

Proper noun dictionary:
proper noun & its
transliterated word pairs

a transliterated word “fudō” can be back-transliterated as“ 不 動 ” (motionless), “ 歩 堂 ” or “ 武 道 ” (martial arts),

Figure 4. The overall process of building a proper noun

where the two words are not proper noun. Thus, it is vital

dictionary

to select actual proper nouns among the candidate proper

Figure 5 shows the back-transliteration process in detail.

nouns in order to improve the quality of the proper noun

Transliterated words in English titles are converted to

dictionary. For this task, the proper nouns are determinedcorresponding Japanese hiragana sequences based on

byHepburn Romanization 1 system. In order to find theassuming any word that is not listed in the bilingual

corresponding Japanese words for hiragana sequences, andictionary is a proper noun, which is depicted asaligned Japanese word and its hiragana sequence pairs are

post-processing based on dictionary lookup in Figure 4.

needed. Thus, we align Japanese word and its hiragana
sequence

pairs

of

the

entriesinUkiyo-erelatedJapanese-English

Besides,somebilingualdictionarytransliterated

words

lookup

might

by

be

back-transliterated into incorrect Japanese words. For

dictionaries and encyclopedias character by character. In

example,this character alignment process, the pronunciation of

back-transliterated into “吉 野 ” (a place name), “葭 の ”

each character in Japanese words is determined by aand “吉 の ”. Among them, “葭 の ” and “吉 の ” are not

Japanesecorrect Japanese words. Such an error can be partly

kanji

pronunciation

dictionary

lookup.

transliterated

composition. We calculate the Japanese kanji and kanamatch partially the hiragana sequences of the entries in

distributions of proper nouns composition from a Japanese

Ukiyo-eproper noun list in humanities domains. Majority ofencyclopedias

forconstraints

onbeeliminated

and

some

can

sequences of transliterated words are used to match or
dictionaries

adding“yoshino”

According to this alignment results, the Japanese hiragana

related

by

word

word

obtaining their corresponding Japanese words. Finally,

Japanese proper nouns consist of kanji. A small number ofcandidateits

proper nouns contain Japanese kana in the middle of atransliterated word pairs are generated through theproper noun, such as “ 七 里 ヶ 浜 ” (a beach called

hiragana sequences.

Shichirigahama) and “程 ヶ 谷 ” (a valley called Hodogaya).

Japanese

word(proper

noun)

and

The back-transliteration process for some transliterated

Therefore, incorrect Japanese proper nouns could bewords in the English titles of Ukiyo-e prints is illustrated

identified by the position of kana. If a Japanese kanain Figure 6. In this example, firstly, a transliterated word

appears at the end of a word, that word might be a“Sumida” is converted into its corresponding Japanese

non-proper noun. For example, “葭 の ” and “吉 の ” might

hiragana sequence “す み だ ”. According to the characterbe non-proper nouns because the Japanese kana “ の ”

alignment result “ 隅 | 田 | 川 -- す み | だ | がappears at the end of the words.

わ”

2

in Ukiyo-e related dictionaries and encyclopedias,“ す み だ ” is used to match partially the hiragana
1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization“隅 田 川 ” is a river called Sumida; “す み だ が わ ” isthe Japanese pronunciation of “隅 田 川 ”.
2Transliterated words
in English

Entries in Ukiyo-e related
dictionaries &encyclopedias

Converting transliterated words toJapanese hiragana sequences

Character alignment

Converting hiragana sequences tocorresponding Japanese words

Character alignment
results of entries

Kanji
pronunciation
dictionary

Candidate proper noun &its transliterated word pairs
Figure 5. The back-transliteration process

English transliterated words• Sumida• Fukagawa• …
Convertingtransliterated words
to Japanese hiragana
sequences

The entries in Ukiyo-e related dictionaries• 隅田川 ↔ すみだがわ• 亦深川 ↔ またふかがわ• ...
Character alignment
with Kanji dictionary

Partial Matching• Sumida → すみだ• Fukagawa → ふかがわ
• …
Finding thecorresponding
Japanese words for
hiragana sequences• Sumida → すみだ → 隅田
• Fukagawa → ふかがわ → 深川
• …
…

Character alignment results• 隅 | 田 | 川 ↔ すみ | だ | がわ
• 亦 | 深 | 川 ↔ また | ふか | がわ

Candidate proper noun andits transliterated word pairs• 隅田 --- Sumida• 深川 --- Fukagawa• …
…

Figure 6. The back-transliteration process of some transliterated words in the titles of Ukiyo-e prints in English

4. Experiments
In this section, we discuss the experimental setup andevaluation for the proposed method.

Edo-Tokyo Museum 3 and 437 English titles in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art 4 , in which each Japanese
title has at least one corresponding English title.
In the process of building a proper noun dictionary,

4.1 Experimental setup
Two preliminary experiments are conducted to evaluate
the proposed method. The first one is to build a proper
noun dictionary. The second one is to use the proper noun
dictionary that is obtained from the first experiment for
the task of record linkage across humanities databases indifferent languages.
The experimental data consists of 45 Japanese titles of
the artist Katsushika Hokusai’s Ukiyo-e prints in thetransliterated words are identified from 437 English titlesof Ukiyo-e prints by using Merriam-Webster's Learner's
Dictionary 5 . Besides, the Japanese word and its hiragana
sequence

pairs

of

the

entriesinUkiyo-erelateddictionaries and encyclopedias are aligned by using the
Kanji dictionary in Kanjijite.net 6 . Ukiyo-e related3

http://digitalmuseum.rekibun.or.jp/index.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/
5
http://www.dictionaryapi.com/products/apilearners-dictionary.htm
6
http://www.kanjijiten.net/index.html
4dictionaries and encyclopedias include 《 浮 世 絵 百 科 》 ,7

In the second experiment, the proper noun dictionary《浮世絵大事典》, 《浮世絵事典》 , 《浮世絵鑑賞基that is obtained from the first experiment is used to

礎 知 識 》 8 , 《 浮 世 絵 百 科 (画 題 ) 》 9 and 《 浮 世 絵 大

identify the same Ukiyo-e prints between the databases in

武者絵展》

10

. Finally, the Japanese proper nouns are

JapaneseandEnglish

[10].

We

have

successfully

selected from candidate proper noun and its transliterated

identified the 42 Ukiyo-e prints out of 45, as shown in row

word pairs by using New College Japanese-English

2 of Table 2. The experimental result is evaluated based on

Dictionary 11 in the post-processing process.

the accuracy in top 1 and top 5, which means the correct
Ukiyo-e prints rank in the top 1 or within top 5 of theidentified results. Compared with the result of our

4.2 Evaluation
In the first experiment, 890 candidate pairs of proper

previous approach [10] that are showed in row 1 of Table 2,noun and its transliterated word are obtained after theboth the accuracy in top 1 and top 5 are improved byback-transliteration process. We check these candidates

utilizing the proper noun dictionary that is built by the

manually and find that there are 571 correct proper nouns

proposed method.

among them. In the post-processing step, 720 words are
determined as proper nouns from the 890 candidates.

Table 2. The experimental results of identifying the same

Among these determined proper nouns, the number of

Ukiyo-e prints between the databases in Japanese andcorrectly

determined

proper

nouns

is

559.

The

Englishexperimental result is evaluated based on precision andExperimental method

Accuracy in top 1

Accuracy within top 5

recall rates:

Our previous approach [10]35 / 45 = 77.8%

39 / 45 = 86.7%

Utilizing the proper noun
dictionary

42 / 45 = 93.3%

42 / 45 = 93.3%

Precision =Recall =𝑡𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑒 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛
𝑡𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑒 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛

𝑡𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑒 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛
𝑡𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑒 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛

(1)
(2)

As shown in the first row of Table 1, the proposed

The experimental results show that, the proposed
method to build a proper noun dictionary can improve theidentification performance of the same Ukiyo-e prints ofmethod achieves 72.4% of precision and 97.9% of recall.

ourThe precision rate is improved by adding the constraint ontransliterating the proper nouns in the titles more precisely.

the appearance of kana at end of Japanese word, as shown

For example, the same Ukiyo-e prints with the Japanesein the second row of Table 1.

title “ 江 都 駿 河 町 三 井 見 世 略 図 ” and English title

Table 1. The experimental results of building a proper

previous

approach[10]bydetermining

and“Mitsui Shop at Surugachô in Edo” are identified
successfully, since the proper nouns “江 都 ” (the name ofnoun dictionary
Experimental method

Precision

RecallBaseline

559 / 720 = 72.4%

559 / 571 = 97.9%

Baseline + Constraint

559 / 685 = 81.6%

559 / 571 = 97.9%

an ancient Japanese city), “駿 河 町 ” (a place name) and“三 井 ” (a shop name) is determined and transliterated
correctly by the proposed method, which was failed in ourprevious approach [10]. A few Ukiyo-e prints areincorrectly identified because some non-proper nouns are

However,asmall

numberofpropernouns

aredetermined as proper nouns in the preceding task. For

incorrectly determined as non-proper nouns because theyexample, a non-proper noun “諸 人 ” (many people) in theare frequently used proper nouns that are listed inJapanese title “諸 人 登 山 ” (groups of mountain climbers)bilingual dictionary, such as “江 戸 ” (old name of Tokyo),is incorrectly determined as a proper noun.

“日 本 ” (Japanese), etc.
7

The encyclopedias 《 浮 世 絵 百 科 》 , 《 浮 世 絵 大 事
典 》, 《 浮 世 絵 事 典 》 contains the titles, artists, subjects,
publishers and some other information of Ukiyo-e prints.
8《 浮 世 絵 鑑 賞 基 礎 知 識 》 is a dictionary of the basic
knowledge for appreciating Ukiyo-e prints.
9《 浮 世 絵 百 科 (画 題 ) 》 is an encyclopedia of thetitles of Ukiyo-e prints.
10《 浮 世 絵 大 武 者 絵 展 》 is an encyclopedia of warriors
in Ukiyo-e prints.
11
http://ejje.weblio.jp/category/dictionary/kenje

5. Conclusion
In this paper, we proposed a method to build a proper
noun dictionary that

contains proper noun

and

its

transliterated word pairs. The proposed method can beused to deal with the task of proper noun transliteration
for record linkage across humanities databases in different
languages. In the future, we plan to extend the proposed
method to other humanities databases.

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