1. CSS 590 C: Introduction to NLP
Yuval Marton
Spring 2017
Much of the materials was borrowed from and/or inspired by course slides of Richard Socher and Chris Manning (Stanford 2016/2017), Kevin Gimpel (TTIC 2016), Chris Callison-Burch (Upenn 2014) & Nizar Habash (Columbia 2013).

2. CSS 590 C: Introduction to NLP
Yuval Marton
Spring 2017
March 27: Introduction to NLP/NLU via MT

3. Why (Machine) Translation?
Languages in the world
6,000+ live languages
600 with written tradition
100 languages are spoken by 95% of world population
Translation Market
$26 Billion Global Market
(2010)
Doubling every five years
(Donald Barabé, invited talk, MT Summit 2003)
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

4. Where? Multilingualism, Language Families
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

5. CSS 590 -- class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU
Language Families
Wikipedia / "Primary Human Language Families Map" by PiMaster3 - Own work.
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

6. Translation Challenges – Multilingual Divergence
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

7. CSS 590 -- class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU
Shatt Al-Arab Fresh Fish
Not understanding language can lead to funny results…
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

8. Multilingual Challenges
nai you duo shi means buttered toast
naiyou means butter
duoshi means toast
duo means many
shi can mean private (as in the army rank)
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

9. CSS 590 -- class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU
Lost in translation
What is this sign about? (answer only if you don’t understand the top two languages)
Machine translation
Great when works
Can fail miserably
What’s wrong here?
Lex sem (word level meaning)
Semantics (meaning of topic)
Syntax
[Answer: swimming pool regulations]
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

10. Affluenza How would you translate ‘affluenza’?
Affluenza, a portmanteau of affluence and influenza, is a term used by critics of consumerism. It is thought to have been first used in 1954 but it gained legs as a concept with a 1997 PBS documentary of the same name and the subsequent book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (2001). These works define affluenza as "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more."The term "affluenza" has also been used to refer to an inability to understand the consequences of one's actions because of financial privilege… [Wikipedia]
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

11. Multilingual Challenges
Orthographic Variations
Ambiguous spelling
كتب الاولاد اشعارا كَتَبَ الأوْلادُ اشعَاراً
Ambiguous word boundaries
Lexical Ambiguity
Bank  بنك (financial) vs. ضفة (river)
Eat  essen (human) vs. fressen (animal)
My work on palestinian, arabic mt and arabic hebrew mt
Highlight similarities and differences
A lot of similarities/differences not included
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

12. Multilingual Challenges Morphological Variations
Affixational (prefix/suffix) vs. Templatic (Root+Pattern)
write 
written
كتب
مكتوب
kill
killed
قتل
مقتول do
done
فعل
مفعول
Tokenization (aka segmentation+normalization)
conj
noun
plural
article
And the cars 
and the cars
والسيارات
w Al SyArAt
Et les voitures
et le voitures
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

13. Morphology يقرأ الطالب المجتهد كتابا عن الصين في الصف
read the-student the-diligent a-book about china in the-classroom
the diligent student is reading a book about china in the classroom
这位勤奋的学生在教室读一本关于中国的书
this quant diligent de student in classroom read one quant about china de book
Arabic: very rich morphology: number, gender, case, person, aspect, voice, several clitics, etc.
Arabic tokenization
English: simple morphology
Chinese: no morphology – quantifiers & verbal aspects
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

14. Multilingual Challenges Morphological Variations
Affixational (prefix/suffix) vs. Templatic (Root+Pattern)
write 
written
كتب
مكتوب
kill
killed
قتل
مقتول do
done
فعل
مفعول
Tokenization (aka segmentation+normalization)
conj
noun
plural
article
And the cars 
and the cars
والسيارات
w Al SyArAt
Et les voitures
et le voitures
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

15. Syntax يقرأ الطالب المجتهد كتابا عن الصين في الصف 这位勤奋的学生在教室读一本关于中国的书
read the-student the-diligent a-book about china in the-classroom
V S O PP-mod-V
the diligent student is reading a book about china in the classroom
S V O PP-mod-V
这位勤奋的学生在教室读一本关于中国的书
this quant diligent de student in classroom read one quant about china de book
S PP-mod-V V O
Arabic
English
Chinese
Subj-Verb
V Subj
Subj V
Subj … V
Verb-PP
V…PP
V PP
PP V
Adjectives
N Adj
Adj N
Adj de N
Possessives
N Poss
N of Poss
Poss ’s N
Poss de N
Relatives
N Rel
Rel de N
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

16. Syntax يقرأ الطالب المجتهد كتابا عن الصين في الصف 这位勤奋的学生在教室读一本关于中国的书
read the-student the-diligent a-book about china in the-classroom
the diligent student is reading a book about china in the classroom
这位勤奋的学生在教室读一本关于中国的书
this quant diligent de student in classroom read one quant about china de book
Arabic
English
Chinese
Subj-Verb
V Subj
Subj V
Subj … V
Verb-PP
V…PP
V PP
PP V
Adjectives
N Adj
Adj N
Adj de N
Possessives
N Poss
N of Poss
Poss ’s N
Poss de N
Relatives
N Rel
Rel de N

17. Multilingual Divergences
conflation
لست am
suis
هنا I
not
here Je ne
pas
ici
لست هنا
I-am-not here
I am not here
Je ne suis pas ici
I not am not here
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

18. Multilingual Divergences categorial, thematic and structural* be
tener *
ا نا
بردان I
cold Yo
frio קר ל
אני
thematic
انا بردان
I cold
I am cold
tengo frio
I-have cold
קר לי
cold for-me
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

19. Multilingual Divergences head swap and categorial
swim I
quickly
across
river
اسرع
انا
سباحة
عبور
نهر
I swam across the river quickly
اسرعت عبور النهر سباحة
I-sped crossing the-river swimming
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

20. Multilingual Divergences head swap and categorial
swim I
quickly
across
river
חצה
אני ב את
נהר
שחיה
מהירות
I swam across the river quickly
חציתי את הנהר בשחיה במהירות
I-crossed obj river in-swim speedily
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

21. Multilingual Divergences head swap and categorial
חצה
אני ב את
נהר
שחיה
מהירות
verb
اسرع
انا
سباحة
عبور
نهر
verb
noun
noun
swim I
quickly
across
river
verb
noun
noun
prep
adverb
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

22. Multilingual Divergences Orthography+Morphology+Syntax
mom’s car
car
mom
possessed-by
妈妈的车
mama de che
سيارة ماما
sayyArat mama
la voiture de maman
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

23. CSS 590 -- class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU
L in 10
To get a glimpse of all that linguistic richness, we will dedicate ~10 minutes each class to learn some facts about a new language
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

24. Multilingual Solutions
(As of 2014?) Google offers translations between the following languages  over 3,000 pairs
Afrikaans
Albanian
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Filipino
Finnish
French
Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Haitian Creole
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Malay
Maltese
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swahili
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Vietnamese
Welsh
Yiddish
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

25. Free Machine Translation !
Can1 Ting1 “dining hall”
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

26. CSS 590 -- class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU
MT in SciFi
Silicon-based (Star Trek), neural / carbon-based
(The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU

27. CSS 590 -- class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU
MT in Present ( )
Military / Gov (then and now)
Industry (aid for human translators – finally profitable!)
Personal (Google Translate, Skype Translator, …)
March 27, Yuval Marton
CSS class 1: Intro to NLP/NLU