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.

---

Claim 8:
8. The conversational sentence translation apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the information on each conversational sentence example in the bilingual database further includes category information indicative of a category of the conversational sentence example; the apparatus further comprises a category storage means for storing the category information of a conversational sentence example precedingly selected by the semantic searcher and established to be a targeted conversational sentence example; and the semantic searcher includes a coincidence deciding means for deciding whether or not the category information of each conversational sentence example and the category information stored in the category storage means are coincident with each other, and preferentially selects a conversational sentence example having a category information coincident with the category information stored in the category storage means as a conversational sentence example semantically close to the input conversational sentence.