Patent ID: 7752032

Claim:
A Japanese-to-Chinese machine translation apparatus comprising: a translation dictionary memory that stores a Japanese-to-Chinese translation dictionary in which a Japanese word and at least one Chinese word which is a translation of the Japanese word are registered in association with each other; a thesaurus memory that stores a Japanese thesaurus in which a Japanese word and a synonym of the Japanese word are registered in association with each other, the synonym being a Japanese word representing a same meaning with the associated Japanese word in a different expression; a translation dictionary searching unit that searches the Japanese-to-Chinese translation dictionary for a Chinese word that is associated with an input Japanese word and determines whether plural Chinese words are hit as a result of search as the Chinese word that is associated with the input Japanese word; a thesaurus searching unit that searches the Japanese thesaurus for the synonym that is associated with the input Japanese word when the plural Chinese words are hit; a similarity calculating unit that calculates a degree of similarity between the synonym and each of the plural Chinese words associated with the input Japanese word, for each of the plural Chinese words; and a translation selecting unit that selects a Chinese word with a highest degree of similarity as a translation of the input Japanese word.