Word Sense Disambiguation - Applications

Definition of Word Sense Disambiguation: Many words have multiple senses. In the context of a given document, typically only one or two of the possible senses of a word are appropriate. Automatic word sense disambiguation is the task of automatically determing the intended sense of a word, based on its surrounding context.
Machine Translation: Ambiguity is a major cause of errors in machine translation. A classic illustration of the problem is the machine translation of the phrase "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" from English, to another language, and then back:
German: "The spirit is ready, but the flesh is weak."
French: "The spirit is laid out, but the flesh is weak."
Portugese: "The spirit is made use, but the meat is weak."
Italian: "The spirit is arranged, but the meat is weak person."
Spanish: "The alcohol is arranged, but the meat is weak."; The translation errors stem from the ambiguous words, "spirit", "willing", and "flesh".
Information Retrieval: Words with multiple senses are problematic for information retrieval. Word sense disambiguation could make search engines more precise.
Information Extraction: The task of information extraction is to find specific information in a given document, such as the name of a commercial product. Ambiguous words can be confusing to information extraction algorithms.

Updated: February 3, 2007.