Patent ID: 8209166

Claim:
A machine translation apparatus comprising: an example storage unit that stores a plurality of example sets in which each example set includes at least a first plurality of words in a first language that form the first phrase and a second plurality of words in a second language that form a second phrase wherein the first and second phrases have possibly equivalent meanings; a concept storage unit that stores a plurality of words in the first language, a plurality of words in the second language, and a plurality of concepts, each representing a meaning shared by words in the first language and second language; a first concept obtaining unit that obtains first concepts from the concept storage unit, the first concepts each corresponding to a word included in a first phrase of at least one of the stored example sets; a second concept obtaining unit that obtains second concepts from the concept storage unit, the second concepts each corresponding to a word included in the second phrase of said one of the stored example sets; wherein the second phrase corresponds to the first phrase in the example set; a determining unit that determines whether there is any unmatched concept between the first concepts and the second concepts associated with said one of the stored example sets, and determines that said one of the stored example sets may not be applicable in at least one translation direction when there is the unmatched concept; a receiving unit that receives an input sentence in the first language; an example set searching unit that searches for any example sets that are analogous to or match the input sentence; a deleting unit that deletes an example set that is determined as inapplicable from the example sets searched by the example set searching unit, based at least in part on whether or not the determining unit determined that there was an unmatched concept between the first and second concepts for that example set; and an output controlling unit that outputs, as a translation result, an example in the second language included in the example sets not deleted by the deleting unit.