A Text Input Front-end Processor 
as an Information Access Platform 
Shinichi DOI, Shin-ichiro KAMEI and Kiyoshi YAMABANA 
C&C Media Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation 
4-1-1, Miyazaki, Miyamae-ku, Kawasaki, KANAGAWA 216-8555 JAPAN 
s-doi@ccm.cl.nec.co.jp, kamei@ccm.cl.nec.co.jp, yamabana@ccm.cl.nec.co.jp 
Abstract 
This paper presents a practical foreign 
language writing support tool which makes it 
much easier to utilize dictionary and example 
sentence resources. Like a Kana-Kanji 
conversion front-end processor used to input 
Japanese language text, this tool is also 
implemented as a front-end processor and 
can be combined with a wide variety of 
applications. A morphological analyzer 
automatically extracts key words from text as 
it is being input into the tool, and these words 
are used to locate information relevant to the 
input text. This information is then 
automatically displayed to the user. With this 
tool, users can concentrate better on their 
writing because much less interruption of 
their work is required for the consulting of 
dictionaries or for the retrieval of reference 
sentences. Retrieval and display may be 
conducted in any of three ways: 1) relevant 
information is retrieved and displayed 
automatically; 2) information is retrieved 
automatically but displayed only on user 
command; 3) information is both retrieved 
and displayed only on user command. The 
extent to which the retrieval and display of 
information proceeds automatically depends 
on the type of information being referenced; 
this element of the design adds to system 
efficiency. Further, by combining this tool 
with a stepped-level interactive machine 
translation function, we have created a PC 
support tool to help Japanese people write in 
English. 
1. Introduction 
When creating text using word processing 
software on a personal computer, it is common to 
refer to books or documents relevant to the text, 
including various kinds of dictionaries and 
reference works. The tools used for accessing 
relevant information, such as CD-ROM 
dictionaries, text databases, and text retrieval 
software, however, often require user actions 
that may seriously interrupt the writing process 
itself. These may include executing retrieval 
software, inputting key words, or copying 
retrieved information into texts. 
The foreign language writing support tool we 
propose here automatically access information 
relevant to input texts. Like a Kana-Kanji 
conversion front-end processor used to input 
Japanese language text, this tool is also 
implemented as a front-end processor (FEP) and 
can be combined with a wide variety of 
applications. The extent to which the retrieval 
and display of information proceeds 
automatically depends on the type of information 
being referenced; this element of the design adds 
to system efficiency. 
In Section 2, we consider the requirements for 
efficient writing support tools and discuss the 
characteristics of our front-end processor and its 
automatic information access function. In Section 
3, we introduce our English writing support tool, 
which has been developed to help Japanese 
people write in English on a PC. This. tool 
combines a front-end processor with the stepped- 
level interactive machine translation method we 
first proposed in Yamabana (1997). In Section 4, 
we describe the automatic information access 
function of the English writing support tool. 
336 
2. FEP-type Information Access 
Platform 
2.1. Text input front-end processor with 
information access functions 
To allow users to concentrate better on their work, 
writing support tools with reference information 
access functions should: 
1) provide for automatic access of reference 
information, i.e. access without explicit 
user commands, 
2) enable users to utilize retrieved information 
with simple operations, and 
3) be compatible with a wide variety of word 
processing applications. 
In developing our FEP-type support tool, we 
started with the text retrieval application 
proposed in Muraki (1997), which provides a 
morphological analyzer that automatically 
analyzes users' input and extracts key words to 
retrieve relevant text from a database. This 
application fulfills the first of the requirement 
listed above. We converted such a morphological 
analyzer into an FEP for use in our tool, which is 
placed between the keyboard and an application. 
When a user inputs texts into this tool, the 
morphological analyzer identifies each word and 
extracts key words automatically before the text 
is entered into the application. The key words are 
used to retrieve information relevant to the input 
texts. This information is displayed for easy 
editing and utilization. Because all of this can be 
achieved with standard hooks and the IME API 
of the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system, 
this tool can be combined with any Windows- 
compatible text-input application. In addition, it 
can be combined with any other front-end 
processor, including Kana-Kanji conversion 
FEPs, through the use of a technique we have 
recently developed. Figure 1 shows the tool 
architecture. 
2.2. Controlling the extent of the 
automation of information retrieval 
and display 
The automatic retrieval and display function 
introduced in the previous subsection allows 
users to concentrate better on their writing 
Input by User 
I Any Kana-Kanji Conversion FEP \[ 
FEP-type 
Information 
Access Platform 
Any Text-input Application 
Mo ho,o,ic   yzor I 
Retrieved ~ key words Znfo ma,ionl In o ation  tnovo  I 
Fie'are 1 Architecture of the FEP-tvtm 
v v - 
Information Access Platform 
because much less interruption of their work is 
required for the consulting of dictionaries or for 
the retrieval of reference sentences. This function, 
however, might prevent users from concentrating 
on their writing if all the retrieved information 
were displayed in a new window, especially 
when the quantity of the retrieved information 
were large and the majority of it were not 
relevant from the users' point of view. 
To compensate for this disadvantage, we 
divided the information access function into three 
steps: 1) extracting key words from the input text, 
2) using the key words to retrieve reference 
information, and 3) displaying the retrieved 
information, and we developed a function to 
control whether the each step is executed 
automatically or manually. We prepare three 
methods for retrieval and display as follows. 
A) Relevant information is retrieved and 
displayed automatically, without user 
command. 
B) Information is retrieved automatically but 
displayed only on user command. After 
automatic retrieval, only the quantity of 
information is displayed, and users can 
decide whether to display it. 
C) Information is both retrieved and displayed 
only on user command. Even in this case, 
because key words are automatically 
337 
extracted before retrieval, our tool requires 
much less user action than other information 
accessing tools. 
The extent to which the retrieval and display of 
information proceeds automatically depends on 
the type of information being referenced; this 
element of the design adds to system efficiency. 
3. English Writing Support Tool 
"Eibun Meibun Meikingu" 
By combining the FEP-type information access 
platform with the stepped-level interactive 
machine translation method we proposed in 
Yamabana (1997), we have developed an English 
writing support tool to help Japanese people write 
in English on a PC. This tool, named "Eibun 
Meibun Meikingu ''l, consists of the following 
three components: 
1) an English writing FEP, "Eisaku Pen ''2, 
which converts Japanese into English, 
2) a CD-ROM dictionary consulting tool, 
"Shoseki Renzu ''3, and 
3) a Japanese-to-English bilingual example 
sentence database, "Reibun Bainda TM. 
Figure 2 shows the architecture of "Eibun 
Meibun Meikingu". This tool is now available as 
a software package. 
3.1. English writing FEP "Eisaku Pen" 
"Eisaku Pen" has an interactive interface similar 
to Kana-Kanji conversion FEPs, and initially 
replaces most of the Japanese vocabulary items 
with English equivalents but maintains Japanese 
grammatical constructions. When a user inputs 
Japanese text, a conversion window of "Eisaku 
Pen" is automatically popped-up and English 
equivalents are displayed in the order of original 
Japanese words. Figure 3 illustrates how text is 
1 The Japanese terms Eibun, Meibun and Meikingu 
mean, respectively, 'English writing', 'beautiful 
writing' and 'making'. 
2 The Japanese terms Eisaku and Pen mean, 
respectively, 'Creating English' and 'a pen'. 
3 The Japanese terms Shoseki and Renzu mean, 
respectively, 'written materials' and 'a lens'• 
4 The Japanese terms Reibun and Bainda mean, 
respectively, 'example sentences' and 'a binder'. 
338 
Any 
I 
Kana-Kanji Conversion FEP I 
I 
! ............. c'------~., 
t 
I 
i 
oi•m•l ....... --°| 
rlo~om .... 
!i l[n'qIishl m~n'q '~pp°rt" "~ c°nvenient r~t°°l -I" ~:~ I ! ~ 
tk 
English sentence [a-ll[~.v*-~ I~:!=r'a)2ZI 
English text [a-'lWt:g.ffJ] I~:!=r,a~2Zill 
English passage [~$1[~=~] I~:!=r'¢gS~iill 
~'iften English [a-]'~=~J] II~,~t'~3~l 
-------I ' 
System i 
Dictionary , 
i 
Expression i 
! 
J Japanese- i 
to-English , 
Conversion J 
Function , 
I 
Eisaku Pen i 
I°--.~.n ...... ,-- ..... ,wo ...... --. 
.r . "-" -i i Example 
~hosek, Renzu. . I Ex ..... eo ~ 
• _ ....... I;-•' ! 
~, ~Re_ip_u.n_Ba_{n_d.d_. 
AnyText-input Application ]~ 
Figure 2 Architecture of the English Writing 
Support Tool "Eibun Meibun Meikingu" 
displayed. When a user inputs Japanese sentence 
"purezento wo arigato", where each word means 
'present', objective marker and 'thank you' 
respectively, "purezento " and "arigato" are 
replaced with their English equivalents 'present' 
and 'thank you' and displayed automatically in 
the conversion window shown in the center of the 
11 appreciate I~] I 
Figure 3 Illustration of "Eisaku Pen" 
figure. The window below is an alternatives 
window to display all the possible equivalents 
for "arigato", by selecting from which, users can 
easily change equivalents. In this alternatives 
window, "Eisaku Pen" provides part-of-speech of 
each alternative equivalents and supplementary 
information indicating the difference between 
their meanings or usage in order to make users' 
equivalent selection easier. 
After confirming the equivalents of input 
words, users can execute the Japanese-to-English 
conversion function, which transforms 
Japanese grammatical constructions into those of 
English and the whole sentence is converted to 
an English sentence: 'Thank you for a present.' 
by automatic word reordering and article 
insertion. This syntactic transformation 
proceeds step by step, in a bottom-up manner, 
combining smaller translation components into 
larger ones. Such a 'dictionary-based 
interactive translation' approach allows users to 
refine dictionary suggestions at different steps of 
the process. Finally, users can also easily change 
articles to obtain the result sentence: 'Thank 
you for the present.' 
The system dictionary of "Eisaku Pen" 
contains about 100,000 Japanese vocabulary 
entries and 15,000 idiomatic expressions. Since 
there was no source available to build an idiom 
dictionary of this size, we collected them 
manually, from scratch, following a method 
described in Tamura (1997). 
3.2. CD-ROM dictionary consulting tool 
"Shoseki Renzu" 
While using "Eisaku Pen", if users want to obtain 
more information on words or equivalents, 
"Shoseki Renzu" provides a function to consult 
CD-ROM dictionaries. 
For example, when users execute the CD- 
ROM dictionary consulting function of "Shoseki 
Renzu" at the situation of the Figure 3, the 
currently selected alternative 'thank you' is 
regarded as a key word for dictionary consulting 
and the contents of the dictionaries for 'thank 
you' is displayed. If users double-click on 
another word in a conversion window or an 
alternatives window including the original 
Japanese word shown at the top of the window, 
the word is regarded as a key word for dictionary 
consulting. 
3.3. Bilingual example sentence database 
"Reibun Bainda" 
"Eibun Meibun Meikingu" also provides a 
function to retrieve and utilize bilingual example 
sentences. Example sentences relevant to the 
texts input by users are retrieved from the 
database of "Reibun Bainda" containing 3,000 of 
Japanese-to-English bilingual sentence pairs for 
letter writing. Figure 4 illustrates the Japanese-to- 
English sentence pairs retrieved when a user 
executes "Reibun Bainda" at the situation of the 
Figure 3. Here, the currently selected original 
Japanese word "arigato" is regarded as a key 
word for retrieving and the example sentences 
which are assigned a key word "arigato" 
beforehand or include strings of "arigato" in the 
Japanese sentence are retrieved from the 
bilingual example sentence database of "Reibun 
Bainda" and displayed in the window as 
illustrated in Figure 4. Japanese sentences are 
shown in the first column and translated English 
sentences are shown in the second one. The third 
one is for supplementary information indicating 
the difference between meanings or usage of the 
sentences. Users can easily send these sentences 
to text-input applications by drag-and-drop 
operation using a mouse. In addition, by using 
"Eisaku Pen", users easily edit a Japanese word 
and its English equivalents in example sentences 
synchronously. 
Ill II IIII I II II .II~l~- 
• " ~TC ~..~.~: ....................................................................... • r~ p,e~ ~o let you know of .,~ { ~, 
~betfJ~t:.b~t:_~tL succe~ in pa~ny the enh'ance ,:, 
E'~. exam. Thank you'once again. :,o: 
~L ~ ~t~. 
• Thank you for responding so 
promptly. 
• We appreciafe your quick 
response. 
• Your letter is acknowledged ~th 
many thanks. 
Fi~ure 4 Illustration of bilin~ual sentences 
v 
retrieved bv " Reibun Bainda" 
339 
4. Information Access Function of 
English Writing Support Tool 
Our tool currently accesses three types of 
information: 1) information, included in the 
system dictionary, regarding grammatical forms 
and idiomatic expressions; 2) straight CD-ROM 
dictionary information; and 3) Japanese-to- 
English example sentences in the database. The 
extent to which the retrieval and display of 
information proceeds automatically depends on 
the type of information being referenced; 
information of type 1) is retrieved and displayed 
automatically, that of type 2) is both retrieved 
and displayed manually, and that of type 3) is 
retrieved automatically but displayed manually. 
In the first case of translation equivalents and 
grammatical information retrieval, "Eisaku Pen" 
automatically retrieves and displays English 
words equivalent to the input Japanese texts 
without explicit user command because users 
always utilize the English equivalents in English 
writing. 
In the second case of CD-ROM dictionary 
consulting, "Shoseki Renzu" retrieves and 
displays contents of CD-ROM dictionaries on 
user command because this dictionary consulting 
function needs to be executed only when users 
require additional information. Our tool requires 
much less user action than other dictionary 
consulting tools because key words are 
automatically extracted before user command for 
retrieval and users don't always need to input key 
words. 
In the third case of bilingual sentence retrieval, 
"Reibun Bainda'" retrieves sentences 
automatically but displays only on user command. 
Because "Reibun Bainda" contains the example 
sentences in itself, relevant sentences are 
retrieved at high speed and the retrieval function 
doesn't interrupt users' writing process. 
Retrieved sentences, however, might include the 
ones not relevant to the input text from users' 
point of view, because similarity between 
sentences is judged with a simple method using 
key words. Therefore, the writing process might 
be interrupted if retrieved sentences were 
displayed automatically. To avoid this problem, 
the color of the icon of "Reibun Bainda" is 
changed after automatic retrieval, depending on 
the existence of relevant sentences, and users can 
decide whether to display the retrieved sentences. 
5. Conclusion 
We present a practical foreign language writing 
support tool which makes it much easier to utilize 
dictionary and example sentence resources. This 
tool is implemented as a front-end processor and 
can be combined with a wide variety of 
applications. The extent to which the retrieval 
and display of information proceeds 
automatically depends on the type of information 
being referenced; this element of the design adds 
to system efficiency. We also describe our 
English writing support tool with a stepped-level 
interactive machine translation function, by 
which users can write English by accessing 
essential information resources including 
bilingual dictionaries and example sentences. 
Our tool is implemented as an English writing 
support tool, now under expansion to a general 
writing support tool. Another further work is 
enlarging resources our tool can access. We are 
also developing an example-based translation 
function which utilizes example sentences in 
"Reibun Bainda" for Japanese-to-English 
conversion function of "Eisaku Pen" and an 
automatic example sentence acquisition function 
which acquires users' input texts and their 
translation and adds them to "Reibun Bainda" 
automatically. 

References 
Muraki K., et al. (1997) Information Sharing 
Accelerated by Work History Based 
Contribution Management, Leads to Knowhow 
Sharing. In "Design of Computing Systems: 
Cognitive Considerations", Salvendy G., et al. 
ed., Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, pp. 81- 
84. 
Tamura S., et al. (1997) An Efficient Way to 
Build a Bilingual Idiomatic Lexicon with Wide 
Coverage for Newspaper Translation. 
NLPRS'97, Phuket, Thailand, pp. 479-484. 
Yamabana K.. et al. (1997) An Interactive 
Translation Support Facility for Non- 
Professional Users. ANLP-97, Washington, pp. 
324-331. 
