Análisis de los recursos lingüísticos utilizados en los sistemas multilingües de búsqueda de respuestas

In the field of information retrieval (hereinafter, RI), there is an increasing development of (monolingual and multilingual) documentary and computer tools that can substantially help specialists in their work -in addition to being useful for other users with diverse information needs-. more diverse-. The development of multilingual tools is still evolving and several years of studies and research are still needed in order for it to improve and develop. One of the main problems faced by these tools is translation (Diekema, 2003), both of queries entered by users and of documentary sources that respond to them. Therefore, in view of RI's growing research, development and creation of multilingual systems, we deem it necessary to conduct a study that focuses on the analysis and evaluation of the resources used by one type of these systems, such as multilingual question-answering systems (hereinafter, QA)

An overview of the linguistic resources used in cross-language question answering systems in CLEF Conference

The development of the Semantic Web requires great economic and human effort. Consequently, it is very useful to create mechanisms and tools that facilitate its expansion. From the standpoint of information retrieval (hereafter IR), access to the contents of the Semantic Web can be favored by the use of natural language, as it is much simpler and faster for the user to engage in his habitual form of expression. The growing popularity of Internet and the wide availability of web informative resources for general audiences are a fairly recent phenomenon, although man´s need to hurdle the language barrier and communicate with others is as old as the history of mankind. The World Wide Web, also known as WWW, together with the growing globalization of companies and organizations, and the increase of the non-English speaking audience, entails the demand for tools allowing users to secure information from a wide range of resources. Yet the underlying linguistic restrictions are often overlooked by researchers and designers. Against this background, a key characteristic to be evaluated in terms of the efficiency of IR systems is its capacity to allow users find a corpus of documents in different languages, and to facilitate the relevant information despite limited linguistic competence regarding the target language

Multilingual Question-Answering System in Biomedical Domain on the Web: An Evaluation

Question-answering systems (QAS) are presented as an alternative to traditional systems of information retrieval, intended to offer precise responses to factual questions. An analysis has been made of the results offered by the QA multilingual biomedical system HONqa, available on the Web. The study has used a set of 120 biomedical definitional questions (What is...?), taken from the medical website WebMD, which were formulated in English, French, and Italian. The answers have been analysed using a serie of specific measures (MRR, TRR, FHS, precision, MAP). The study confirms that for all the languages analysed the functioning effectiveness needs to be improved, although in the multilingual context analysed the questions in the English language achieve better results for retrieving definitional information than in French and Italian

Open- vs. Restricted-Domain QA Systems in the Biomedical Field

Question Answering Systems (hereinafter QA systems) stand as a new alternative for Information Retrieval Systems. We conducted a study to evaluate the efficiency of QA systems as terminological sources for physicians, specialized translators, and users in general. To this end we analysed the performance of two open-domain and two restricted domain QA systems. The research entailed a collection of one hundred fifty definitional questions from WebMed. We studied the sources that QA systems used to retrieve the answers, and later applied a range of evaluation measures to mark the quality of answers. Through analysing the results obtained by asking the 150 questions in the QA systems MedQA, START, QuALiM and HONqa, it was possible to evaluate the systems’ operation through applying specific metrics. Despite the limitations demonstrated by these systems, as they are not accessible to everyone and they are not always completely developed, it has been confirmed that these four QA systems are valid and useful for obtaining definitional medical information in that they offer coherent and precise answers. The results are encouraging because they present this type of tool as a new possibility for gathering precise, reliable and specific information in a short period of time

Métodos y técnicas para la indización y la recuperación de los recursos de la World Wide Web / Indexing and retrieval methods and techniques for the World Wide Web

Information search tools in the World Wide Web use different approaches and mechanisms to compile and index information to update their databases. The diversity of document formats and contents makes the process more difficult. The strategies chosen by these tools directly affects their efficiency at retrieving information. Some methods to optimize search tools to accomodate information needs are described. The new role or information intermediaries in the World Wide Web is analyzed

An overview of the linguistic resources used in cross-language question answering systems in CLEF Conference

The development of the Semantic Web requires great economic and human effort. Consequently, it is very useful to create mechanisms and tools that facilitate its expansion. From the standpoint of information retrieval (hereafter IR), access to the contents of the Semantic Web can be favored by the use of natural language, as it is much simpler and faster for the user to engage in his habitual form of expression. The growing popularity of Internet and the wide availability of web informative resources for general audiences are a fairly recent phenomenon, although man´s need to hurdle the language barrier and communicate with others is as old as the history of mankind. The World Wide Web, also known as WWW, together with the growing globalization of companies and organizations, and the increase of the non-English speaking audience, entails the demand for tools allowing users to secure information from a wide range of resources. Yet the underlying linguistic restrictions are often overlooked by researchers and designers. Against this background, a key characteristic to be evaluated in terms of the efficiency of IR systems is its capacity to allow users find a corpus of documents in different languages, and to facilitate the relevant information despite limited linguistic competence regarding the target language

Open- vs. Restricted-Domain QA Systems in the Biomedical Field

Question Answering Systems (hereinafter QA systems) stand as a new alternative for Information Retrieval Systems. We conducted a study to evaluate the efficiency of QA systems as terminological sources for physicians, specialized translators, and users in general. To this end we analysed the performance of two open-domain and two restricted domain QA systems. The research entailed a collection of one hundred fifty definitional questions from WebMed. We studied the sources that QA systems used to retrieve the answers, and later applied a range of evaluation measures to mark the quality of answers. Through analysing the results obtained by asking the 150 questions in the QA systems MedQA, START, QuALiM and HONqa, it was possible to evaluate the systems’ operation through applying specific metrics. Despite the limitations demonstrated by these systems, as they are not accessible to everyone and they are not always completely developed, it has been confirmed that these four QA systems are valid and useful for obtaining definitional medical information in that they offer coherent and precise answers. The results are encouraging because they present this type of tool as a new possibility for gathering precise, reliable and specific information in a short period of time

Overview of Translation Techniques in Cross-Language Question Answering during the last decade

The development of the Semantic Web requires great economic and human effort. Consequently, it is very useful to create mechanisms and tools that facilitate its expansion. From the standpoint of Information Retrieval, access to the contents of the Semantic Web can be favored by the use of natural language, as it is much simpler and faster for the user to engage in his habitual form of expression

Searching Health Information in Question-Answering Systems

Question-Answering Systems (QA Systems) can be viewed as a new alternative to the more familiar Information Retrieval Systems. These systems try to offer detailed, understandable answers to factual questions, in order to retrieve a collection of documents related to a particular search (Jackson & Schilder, 2005). The authors carry out a study to evaluate the quality and efficiency of open- and restricted-domain QA systems as sources for physicians and users in general through one monolingual evaluation and another multilingual. Their objective led them to use definition-type questions in order to evaluate QA systems and determine if they are useful to retrieve medical information. In addition, they analyze and evaluate the results obtained, and identify the source or sources used by the systems and their procedure (Olvera-Lobo & Gutiérrez-Artacho, 2010, 2011)

Satisfacción de usuarios del ámbito de la traducción en el uso de sistemas de búsqueda multilingüe de respuestas como recurso de información terminológica

The present work focuses exclusively on the evaluation of multilingual answer search systems since it allows the user to access terminological information not available in their language, and in the user-centered evaluation to understand the needs of the user and identify the dimensions and factors in the development of an information system in order to improve its acceptance