Approaches

1. Query translation
  • The search portal extends the query with translations of the contained terms and phrases. It then queries the extended version.
  • Disadvantages
    • erroneous translations impair the quality of the results
2. Content translation
  • Translation of the relevant parts of the portal's content (metadata and abstracts) into all other languages.
  • Advantages
    • fast search due to lack of on-line translation
  • Disadvantages
    • four language pairs require twelve translation directions
    • due to the varying amounts of training material for the different language pairs, the quality of automatic translation could differ greatly
3. English as a pivot language
  • Online translation of all search queries and offline translation of the database, each into English.
  • Advantages
    • only three translation processes required
    • translations into English are most likely of highest quality
  • Disadvantages
    • separate translation of search queries and database can lead to errors in two places
4. Knowledge-based approach
  • Terms contained in the search query are mapped on-line onto specialist thesauri
  • Advantages
    • can be combined with any of the previous methods
  • Disadvantages
    • PubPsych datasets use multiple controlled vocabularies, which would require mapping the different terms onto each other