DTD-driven bilingual document generation

Extensively annotated bilingual parallel corpora can be exploited to feed editing tools that integrate the processes of document composition and translation. Here we discuss the architecture of an interactive editing tool that, on top of techniques common to most Translation Memory-based systems, applies the potential of SGML's DTDs to guide the process of bilingual document generation. Rather than employing just simple task-oriented mark-up, we selected a set of TEI's highly complex and versatile collection of tags to help disclose the underlying logical structure of documents in the test-corpus. DTDs were automatically induced and later integrated in the editing tool to provide the basic scheme for new documents. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n This paper discusses an approach to the architecture of an experimental interactive editing tool that integrates the processes of source document composition and translation into the target language. The tool has been conceived as an optimal solution for a particular case of bilingual production of legal documentation, but it also illustrates in a more general way how to exploit the possibilities of SGML (ISO8879, 1986) used extensively to annotate a whole range of linguistic and extralinguistic information in specialized bilingual corpora. SGML is well established as the coding scheme underlying most Translation Memory based systems (TMBS), and has been proposed as the cod-it~g scheme for the interchange of existing Translation Memory databases Translation Meinories eXchange, TMX (Melby, 1998). The advantages of SGML have also been perceived by a large conmmnity of corpus linguistics researchers, and big efforts have been made in the development of suitable markup options to encode a variety of textual types and functions -as clearly demonstrated by the Text Encoding Initiative, TEI; (Burnard & SpebergMacQueen, 1995). While the tag-sets employed by TMBS are simple and task-oriented, TEI has offered a highly complex and versatile collection of tags. The guiding hypothesis in our experiment has been the idea that it is possible to explore TEI/SGML markup in order to develop a system that carries the concept of Translation Memory one step further. One important leature of SGML is the DTD. DTDs determine the logical structure of documents and how to tag them accordingly. We have concentrated on the accurate description of documents by means of TEI conformant SGML markup. The markup will help disclose the underlying logical structure of documents. From annotated documentation, DTDs can be induced and these DTDs provide the basic scheme to produce new documents. We have collected a corpus of official publications from three main institutions in the Basque Autonomous Region in Spain, the Boletln Oficial de Bizkaia (BOB, 1990-1995), Botetln Oficial de Alava (BOA, 1990-1994) and Bolet{n Oficial del Pais Vasco (BOPV, 1995). Documents in the corpus were composed by Adnfinistration clerks and translated by translators. Both clerks and translators have been using a wide variety of word-processors, although since 1994 MSWord has been generalized as the standard editing tool. Administrative documentation shows a regular structure, and is rich • in*recurrent textual pa t t e rns . For each docu. . . . . ment type different document tokens share a common global distribution of elements. Official document composers learn these global structures and apply them consistently. It is also the case that composers tend to reuse old