ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Multilingual Mobile and Query System

MOUSSA ABDALLAH, ATA ALQADI, AHMAD SALEH, AND WALEED KHAMIS Department of Electronics Engineering, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman, Jordan. [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract: - This paper presents a system that takes a message through a mobile service, the message is sent to a server for translation. The system relies on or any third party translator using the internet. The message is translated regardless of its length then sent back to the server, then it is delivered to the user of interest. The system provides a query service where the message itself could contain information about a product or service. The system has the capability to translate up to 15 languages including Korean and Chinese. The system performance shows that a query and translation cycle needs 10 to 15 seconds depending on how long are the message and the efficiency of the service provider.

Key-Words: - Mobile system, Multilingual translation, query system and SMS, Google translator.

1 Introduction: The communication channels are expanding with have created a global economy with an entirely new set advances in electronic and wireless data transmission, the of rules, opportunities and challenges. Cross-cultural rapid expansion of the global communications networks, experts and certified interpreters and translators currently the accelerated adoption of mobile applications and real- offer their services on a per-assignment basis or are time global network delivery tools. Because SMS is contracted by third-party groups to fulfill the needs of supported by virtually all of the mobile telephone service clients. A real time-global communication platform, with providers around the world, there is now the opportunity a database of rated providers, matchmaking tools, and to support simple and inexpensive messaging between scheduling components, will better serve individuals and people in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, organizations that demand more personalized attention, however, cross-cultural communication and global faster delivery of service, and more precise solutions. A communication, wherein there exists personal and system with an extensive database of providers, subject professional interaction between parties who speak matter experts, real-time communication technology and different languages and/or come from different cultures, digital collaboration tools will help people achieve goals present greater challenges for individuals and in a situation and/or environment where language and organization. For example, it may be difficult (or even culture barriers exist [2]. impossible) for an English-only speaker to engage in an There are several techniques currently available for SMS messaging session with a French- or German-or in addressing such language barriers [3]. In one, a user of an any other language only speaker without some sort of instant messaging tool types a message in their own, or intervening translation service [1]. The convergence of preferred, language into a separate translation program or computing, communication and real-time technologies web site. The user must then activate the translation tool

ISSN: 1790-5117 111 ISBN: 978-960-474-072-7 ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING to translate the message into the destination language, around the world, which also lessens the utility of the and cut and paste the translated text back into the text messaging service. field of the instant messaging tool. Once this is complete, In other techniques [4-6], a dedicated translation tool is the user can transmit the message. While this method can integrated with an instant messaging program. These be effective, it is obvious that the process of continually techniques are lacking in flexibility, however, because cutting, pasting and switching between applications they tie the messaging program to a single translation significantly impedes the communication process. tool and do not take advantage of existing translation Locating good translation tools can also be difficult and tools available, many online. We propose a system for distracting for users. And because any one translation multilingual SMS translation and query system, highly tool may not support all language needs a particular user dynamic, scalable and efficient since the system depends could have, a user may find himself or herself utilizing on a third party translator susch as google tranalsate. numerous different tools to chat with different contacts

2 Problem Formulation A solution for this is to provide a method for translating a for query part, handling request is entirely made by the message from a first language to a second language, as system, where; placed request processed to get the most well as providing a method for facilitating querying for relevant information. information in different language, and provide a method to place a request either to translate sentences, words, and/or terminologies from and to set of languages or to query about information they need to know, all through SMS messages. So it is very important to provide more mobility to access information that is available only through internet connected devices. M O

B I L E

P V V C H M M The method enables translating a message from a first S O O O A M A M I I L C C N I S S L L E E E

language to a second language and also facilitates N E T querying for information in different language by using W O R K server as shown in Fig. 1. The method uses the Short Message Service (SMS) to provide a service in which reaching specific information gets easier. Further the method allows users to place a request either to translate sentences, words, and/or terminologies from and to set of languages or to query about information they need to know, all through SMS messages. As for translation request, a third party translator is used to process requests, where; server is the mediator that takes user Fig. 1: The Mobile Multilingual SMS tranlation system request as an SMS message, forward it to third party translator and sends back the result to the user, whereas

ISSN: 1790-5117 112 ISBN: 978-960-474-072-7 ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

3 System Design contains a system that handles the 3.1 Translation voice call messages and converts it to text. Another feature of the method is to find the location of user by The system provides a solution for translating a message using the local GSM stations through the server. from a first language to a second language, wherein the technique used comprising the steps of: (a) Sending an message in a first language to the 3.2 Query server, wherein the specific code is embedded into The system also provides a mechanism for facilitating the message; querying for information in different language; wherein (b) scanning the message obtained from step (a) by the the said method comprising the steps of : server for a code embedded in the language; (a) ending a query in a first language to the server, (c) translating the content of the message from the first wherein the specific code is embedded into the language to the second language in accordance with query; the embedded code resulting in translated content; (b) scanning the query obtained from step (a) by the (d) sending the message obtained from step (c) to a server for a code embedded in the language; recipient, wherein the message includes the (c) searching the information in accordance with the translated content in a desired language in embedded code of the query and resulting the accordance with the embedded code. information in translated content; In an embodiment of the method, the message used is in (d) sending the information obtained from step (c) to a the form of at least SMS, MMS, voice mail or voice call, recipient, wherein the query includes the translated which contains an embedded code in a specific format, content in a desired language in accordance with the used in the following manners: embedded code. SP In an embodiment of the present method, wherein the SPSP query used is in the form of at least SMS, MMS, voice In which the Tag indicates a command to the system for mail or voice call. that contains an embedded code in a translation use, the command used for translation is Tr. specific format, used in the following manners: While the SP indicates a standard ASCII space. As for SP the other parts, the source_language indicates the first SPSP language that the user used in the message, the Where the Tag indicates a command to the system for target_language indicates the second language that the information use, the SP indicates a standard ASCII space. user want to be translated, and the request_text indicates As for the other parts, the query_language indicates the the text that needs to be processed. first language that the user used for asking query, the target_language indicates the second language in which The translation is done through a third party translator, the user wants to be translated the information, and the which is selected from the group consisting of Google query text indicates the query that needs to be processed translation service, Microsoft translation service, to get the information. Babylon etc. the first and second language is used in accordance with the third party translator, Also the input In this method, the information is provided through a language can be set as default language. Also the mehtod third party service provider, the third party service

ISSN: 1790-5117 113 ISBN: 978-960-474-072-7 ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING provider is consisting of data related to tourism and returns the results in the default target language. Yellow pages.The language of query is used in  Ex En Fr text: Process the text in English and accordance with the third party translator previously returns the results in French. mentioned.  Tr en fr hello (SMS) Still yet another embodiment of the present invention, the  Trm en fr hello (MMS) server contains a speech recognition system that handles  Trvm en fr hello (Voice Mail) the voice call query and converts it to text. Another The message passes through four processes: text parsing, feature of the method is to find the location of user by request processing, results formatting, and send back using the local GSM stations through the server. process (see Fig. 2)

4 Discussion and Results The parsing process, consists of 3 stages. The first stage The short message service (SMS) is being used as a splits the message text into four parts, Tag, channel to connect the user with the server. Using a Source_language, Target_language, and Request_text. network providing the SMS, the user can The parsing process removes the spaces between the send a text message to the server including certain format words, then tests the Tag to see if it has acceptable value, to request certain information. if this value passes the test, then the system moves to the The body of the SMS text message must follow the language assignment stage; else it goes to the error format shown in Fig. 2. detection stage (see Fig. 3).

The processing stage, executes the request indicated by the Tag parameter this request can be Translation, Query, Help, or any other process that can be performed and defined by the system. The Translation process works in the following manner: first the Request_text will be sent to a third party translator (e.g. Google translation service, Microsoft translation service, Babylon … etc) to be translated from the Source_language to the Target_language. If the translation is allowed between these two languages, the request is sent to the third party translator; else the Fig. 2: A system block of the mobile tranlation and query Request_text will be translated from Source_language system to a middle language (i.e. English), and then from that middle language to the Target_language. Then the result The previous format can be used in several ways, such as will be stored in the Translated_text parameter. (Using Ex as an example of a Tag):  Ex text: Process the text in the default source The Query process starts with checking the language and returns the results in the default Source_language to meet the Query_language (i.e. the target language. database language), if it is different then it translates the  Ex En text: Process the text in English and Request_text from that language to the Query_language

ISSN: 1790-5117 114 ISBN: 978-960-474-072-7 ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING using the Translation process, the Translated_text the important data the user seeks. For example, if a user returned is then stored into the Query_text parameter. If searches for restaurants, the Result_text must contain the the Source_language equals the Query_language, then restaurant name, phone number, and location. The the Request_text is stored into the Query_text parameter. formatted string can be on the following image:

Analyzing the Query_text using the Query Analyzer Restaurant_Name(Area-phone_Number) determines the Query_category and the Query_keywords. Both parameters can be used to get Minimizing the number of spaces gives an extra room for specific results from the database using advanced more results to be contained in the Result_text. keyword-based search engine biased to meet user expectations. The send back stage objective is to send the Result_text as an SMS messages to the user, using an SMS server. If The results returned by the search engine can be more the result is not requested in SMS message format, then it than what a user needs so taking the top ten of the search might be a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) engine results is more than enough to fill up to three message, a voice call, or a voice mail. Either case, the SMS messages. This result set, if the Target_language is system formats the result to meet the user request. In the not equal to the Query_language, must be translated MMS message case, a text-to-image conversion is used using the Translation process. to convert the Result_text to image format, and to send it The formatting process, includes formatting the required as an MMS message through MMS. In the voice call or number of SMS messages to contain the results returned the voice mail case, the system uses a text-to-speech from the Translation or the Query processes. conversion to convert the Result_text to voice format.

In the results formatting process, if the Target_language The Help process is an important part of the system. The is English; then a single SMS message can contain up to help process starts by sending a message to the user when 160 characters. If the Target_language is not English; the roaming service is activated, or when the user sends then a single SMS message can contain up to 70 HELP as an SMS message in his own language. This characters. So a single SMS message cannot contain help to determine what language the user speaks, then the more than that number of characters, and so does the system replies by sending instructions showing how to Result_text. get the supported languages list, supported Query and Translation tags in the user spoken language. In the case of the Translation request, the SMS preparation occurs by splitting the Translated_text into Space Space several messages depending on the maximum number of characters an SMS message can contain. Noting that word clipping in the last word of the SMS message, must An example for this, when English is the be considered and avoided. source_language, is: Tr fr hello In the case of the Query request, the SMS preparation Then when the user needs to use the regular format, she occurs by forming the Result_text that contains most of will need to add a (-) minus sign before the

ISSN: 1790-5117 115 ISBN: 978-960-474-072-7 ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING source_language, in the following format: faster with the nationals. The system is scalable in terms of the nuber of languages provided by the third party Space – Space tranlator. As a future work, voice and image tranlator Space will be implemented. 6 Acknowledgement An example for this is: This work is supported by King Abdullah II Fund for Tr –en fr hello Development (KAFD) and King Abdullah II Design and The above stages may encounter certain errors during the Development Bureau (KADDB) execution; these errors must be handled. An example of 6 References an error is that if the Tag is not supported or in error [1] H. W. John; and H. L. Somers, An Introduction to format, then the system sends an error message back to . London: Academic Press. the user indicating error in service usage, with [2] Claude Piron, Le défi des langues — Du gâchis au instructions to use the help. Another example is in the bon sens (The Language Challenge: From Chaos to Query process, if the user has been searching for non- Common Sense), Paris L'Harmattan, 1994 existing information, and the Result_set is empty. In this [3] G. Held, Data over Wireless Networks, Wiley, 2001. case the system returns an error message indicating no [4] I. Groves, Mobile Systems, Chapman & Hall, 1998. results was found for the supplied text. [5] N. M. Mishchencho, A mobile system of word-for- word translation based on formal specifications for rendering of scientific texts in inflectional languages, Cybernetics and System Analysis, Vol. 35, No. 1, 1999, pp. 32-39.

[6] M. Paul, H. Okuma, H. Yamamoto, E. Sumita, S. Matsuda, T. Shimizu and S. Nakamura, Multilingual Mobile-Phone Tranlation Services for World Travelers, Coling 2008, Manchester, Uk, 2008, pp. 165-168.

Fig. 3 Error detection system

5 Conclusion and Future work The multilingual mobile SMS tranlator designed in an intelligent way to take the advantage of the third party translator, in our case is google translator. The mobile translator with its query system plugins will be an important feature in helping tourists in communicating

ISSN: 1790-5117 116 ISBN: 978-960-474-072-7