Patent Document ID: 8185372
Application ID: 11519811

Base Claim:
1. An example-based translation apparatus comprising: a storage unit that stores source examples of a source language and target examples of a target language in a many-to-many relationship meaning that each of the source examples is associated with one or more of the target examples having the same or similar meaning, and each of the target examples is associated with one or more of the source examples having the same or similar meaning; an input receiving unit that receives an input of a sentence in the source language; a source example search unit that searches the storage unit to identify one or more of the source examples based on the sentence in the source language; a target example search unit that, for each of the first source examples, searches the storage unit to identify one or more of the target examples that have similar meanings as the identified first source example: a determining unit that determines whether there are a plurality of identified target examples; a first acquisition unit that, for each of the identified target examples, acquires from the storage unit one or more second source examples that correspond to the identified target example, when there are the plurality of identified target examples; a second acquisition unit that, for each of the second source examples, acquires from the storage unit one or more target examples that correspond to the second source example; a choice generating unit that chooses one of the second source examples that is associated with the fewest number of the acquired target examples; and an output control unit that outputs the chosen second source example.

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Claim 12:
12. The example-based translation apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein when there are a plurality of the source examples that have the same meaning, the storage unit sets the source examples having the same meaning as a source example group, and collectively stores the source example group in association with the target examples, when there are a plurality of the target examples that have the same meaning, the storage unit sets the target examples having the same meaning as a target example group, and collectively stores the target example group in association with the source examples, the source example search unit searches the storage unit to identify one of the first source examples or the first source example group; the target example search unit searches to identify the target examples and the target example group corresponding to the first source example or the first source example group, the determining unit determines whether there is more than one identified target example or identified target example group, when the determining unit determines that there is more than one identified target example or target example group, the first acquisition unit acquires a second source example or a second source example group associated with each of the identified target examples or the identified target example groups, the second acquisition unit acquires a target example or a target example group corresponding to the second source example or the second source example group, and the choice generating unit chooses the second source example or the second source example group associated with the fewest number of the acquired target examples.