An Efficient Lexicon Management System for Machine Translation

Abstract

Minimal usage of storage space, maximal speed in retrieval of desired textual items, and ability to update with minimal side-effects on the lexicon are three major concerns in lexicon management systems. We propose an efficient mechanism for organization of a lexicon along with its retrieval, update mechanisms. The update operation is for all practical purposes side-effect-free; the retrieval operation is not closely dependent on the size of the lexicon nor adversely on the complexity of the internal representation of the lexical items, rather it has an interesting property of often allowing faster retrieval for more complex items; and the storage overhead is negligible.