Patent Document ID: RE45530
Application ID: 12292403

Base Claim:
1. An electronic dictionary comprising; a memory that contains a data structure composed of a plurality of records, each record comprising representations of the following: a first term, a second term, and a topical code, wherein said first term is in a first language, said second term is in a second language and said topical code indicates a topical area in which the second term is a translation of the first term, a record in the data structure having been generated by (a) providing a collection of textual objects in the first or second language, each textual object having been associated with one or more codes that identify a topic to which the textual object pertains, and (b) entering into the record representations of a term from the textual object, a topical code associated with the textual object, and the corresponding term from a translation of the textual object into the other language.

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Claim 2:
2. A method of using an electronic dictionary of claim 1 for , said electronic dictionary comprising: a memory that contains a data structure composed of a plurality of records, each record comprising representations of the following: a first term, a second term, and a topical code, wherein said first term is in a first language, said second term is in a second language and said topical code indicates a topical area in which the second term is a translation of the first term, a record in the data structure having been generated by (a) providing a collection of textual objects in the first or second language, each textual object having been associated with one or more codes that identify a topic to which the textual object pertains, and (b) entering into the record representations of a term from the textual object, a topical code associated with the textual object, and the corresponding term from a translation of the textual object into the other language, wherein said electronic dictionary is used to automatically translate text by selecting topic-appropriate translations of terms in a textual object in a first language into a second language comprising the steps of from terms in a second language, the method comprising : (a) providing an said electronic dictionary of claim 1 containing records comprising representations of terms in said first language and said second language; (b) scanning a textual object in said first language to identify each occurrence of a term in said textual object in a record of said electronic dictionary; (c) inserting each topical code associated with each of said records identified in step (b) into a data structure that provides for counting of the frequency of occurrence of each topical code; and (d) whenever there occur a plurality of terms in the second language corresponding to a term in the first language, selecting the term associated with the most frequently occurring topical code.