Patent ID: 8914277

Claim:
A method comprising: performing, by computer processing hardware, operations of: receiving an utterance spoken in a first language; partitioning a spoken sentence in the utterance into multiple segments, a given segment of the multiple segments including multiple words spoken in the first language; converting the given segment of the multiple segments into multiple candidate textual phrases in a second language, further comprising: performing a speech-to-text translation of the given segment into a set of candidate textual expressions in the first language by translating the given segment into at least a first candidate textual expression and a second candidate textual expression in the first language; and wherein performing the language translation includes: identifying that the first candidate textual expression translates into a first candidate textual phrase and a second candidate textual phrase; and identifying that the second candidate textual expression translates into a third candidate textual phrase and a fourth candidate textual phrase, the first candidate textual phrase being identical to the third candidate textual phrase; and for each respective candidate textual expression in the set; performing a language translation of the respective candidate textual expression into multiple candidate textual phrases in the second language; producing a confidence metric for each respective candidate textual phrase of the multiple candidate textual phrases in the second language, the confidence metric indicating a confidence that the respective candidate textual phrase is an accurate translation of the given segment of the utterance into the second language; producing a confidence value for each of the candidate textual expressions in the first language; producing a confidence value for each of the candidate textual phrases in the second language; and generating a confidence metric for the first candidate textual phrase based on a sum of a first term and a second term, the first term being a product of a confidence value for the first candidate textual expression multiplied by a confidence value for the first candidate textual phrase, the second term being a product of a confidence value for the second candidate textual expression multiplied by a confidence value for the third candidate textual phrase.