Answering English questions using foreign-language, semi-structured sources

Despite continuing advances in machine translation technology, users who lack familiarity with particular foreign languages have no good way to find information in those languages. In this paper, we present a technical framework and implemented system that answers English questions on the basis of information in foreign-language, semi-structured sources such as websites. This work helps users locate, with high precision, relevant segments of foreign-language information, and then makes use of existing machine translation services to present that information in English. The resulting technology extends an approach embodied in the START information access system and its supporting Omnibase uniform data access system, and it has been applied to several Chinese and Arabic websites.