Patent Document ID: 6154720
Application ID: 08663345

Base Claim:
1. A conversational sentence translation apparatus comprising: input means through which a free conversational sentence in a first language is inputted in the apparatus; a semantic feature dictionary in which information on various semantic features is stored, said information on each semantic feature including a name of the semantic feature and at least one character string in the first language having the semantic feature, said character strings serving as elements of sentences in the first language; a bilingual database in which information on various conversational sentence examples is stored, said information on each conversational sentence example including a conversational sentence example in the first language, a translation in a second language of the conversational sentence example, and a string of semantic features contained in the conversational sentence example; an analyzer for, with reference to the semantic feature dictionary, extracting semantic features from the conversational sentence input through the input means; a semantic searcher for searching the bilingual database for the semantic features extracted by the analyzer to determine a degree of semantic coincidence between each conversational sentence example and the input conversational sentence and select a conversational sentence example having a highest degree of semantic coincidence; and display means for displaying the conversational sentence example selected by the semantic searcher and the translation thereof.

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Claim 17:
17. The conversational sentence translation apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the information on a conversational sentence example registered in the bilingual database further includes one or more semantic feature strings of one or more assumed sentences semantically similar to the conversational sentence example, in addition to the semantic feature string of the conversational sentence example itself, and the semantic searcher performs the operation to search the bilingual database for the semantic features extracted by the analyzer to select a conversational sentence example, for each of the plurality of semantic feature strings of the pertinent conversational sentence example, independently.