The Problem of Cross-Language Information Retrieval

Abstract

As the World Wide Web infiltrates more and more countries, banalizing network, interface, and computer system differences which have impeded information access, it becomes more common for non-native speakers to explore multilingual text collections. Beyond merely accepting 8-bit accented characters, information retrieval systems should provide help in searching for information across language boundaries. This situation has given rise to a new research area called Cross Language Information Retrieval, at the intersection of Machine Translation and Information Retrieval. Though sharing some problems in both of these areas, Cross Language Information Retrieval poses specific problems, three of which are described in this chapter.