Building a Bilingual WordNet-Like Lexicon: The New Approach and Algorithms

A bilingual concept MRD is of significance for IE, MT, WSD and the like. However, it is reasonably difficult to build such a lexicon for there exist two ontologies, also, the evolution of such a lexicon is quite challenging. In this paper, we would like to put forth the new approach to building a bilingual WordNet-like lexicon and to dwell on some of the pivotal algorithms. A characteristic of this new approach is to emphasize the inheritance and transformation of the existent monolingual lexicon. On the one hand, we have extracted all the common knowledge in WordNet as the semantic basis for further use. On the other hand, we have developed a visualized developing tool for the lexicographers to interactively operate on to express the bilingual semantics. The bilingual lexicon has thus gradually come into being in this natural process. ICL now has benefited a lot by employing this new approach to build CCD (Chinese Concept Dictionary), a bilingual WordNet-like lexicon, in Peking University.