Intelligently translate names based on spelling, phonetics, and meaning

Overview
Machine translation for names
High-quality machine translation is a work in progress for languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Korean, but Rosette® has solved the very specific and ubiquitous problem of translating names. Human translators are excellent at translating sentences, but computers are superior when it comes to consistently applying complex transliteration standards to translating names.
Whether for gisting reports or translating entire name directories, Rosette’s name translator is fast and produces consistent spellings.
Accurate and smart
Rosette translates names using its knowledge of language-specific naming conventions. Our name translation tools are trained to recognize when to transliterate a name (based on spelling or sound), and when to translate the meaning (as with a personal title like “King”).
The name translator produces highly accurate, standardized English translations based on linguistic algorithms and statistical modeling. Rosette supports name translation in complex, non-Latin languages — such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Korean, Persian, Thai, and Urdu — and plugs into familiar document and spreadsheet applications.
Product highlights
- Supports multiple language pairs and writing systems
- Plugin for MS Word and MS Excel
- Fast and scalable
- Industrial-strength support
- Cloud, on-premise, and search plugin deployments
How It Works
Spelling versus meaning
Words in a name can be translated according to their spelling/pronunciation or their meaning. Consider the following example:
Notice the title, “King,” and its placement. In any given language, a name may be native to that language or transliterated from another language. Consider محمود أحمدي نجاد (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), whose name is native to Arabic, and جورج دبليو بوش (George W. Bush), whose name is not. In each case, Rosette attempts to provide the most logical translation. Thus from Arabic to English, Rosette offers “George Bush,” instead of the transliterated “Jurj Bush.”
Features of the name translator
- Consistently follows the user-chosen transliteration standard, such as the IC or U.S. Board on Geographic Names for translating from non-Latin scripts to English
- Distinguishes between when to generate “conventional spellings” of common or well-known names and when to transliterate “unrecognized” names; i.e., those not appearing in any known catalog of foreign names
- Automatically resolves name spelling ambiguities in the source language, such as partial vocalization of Arabic, or word segmentation in Chinese
Tech Specs
Availability and platform support
Deployment availability: | |
Plugins: | |
Bindings: |
Supported language pairs
Arabic ↔ English | Dari ↔ English | Khmer ↔ English | Thai ↔ English | |
Burmese ↦ English | Farsi ↔ English | Korean ↔ English | Urdu ↔ English | |
Chinese ↔ English | Greek ↦ English | Korean ↔ Japanese | ||
Chinese ↔ Japanese | Hebrew ↦ English | Pashto ↔ English | ||
Chinese ↔ Korean | Japanese ↦ English | Russian ↔ English |
Supported writing systems and transliteration standards
Language | Script | Sample | Supported transliteration standards |
---|---|---|---|
Arabic | Arabic | محمد أنور السادات | IC, SATTS, BGN, Basis, Buckwalter, and others |
Persian (Dari/Farsi) | Arabic | عذرا جعفری (Dari) شيرين عبادى (Farsi) |
BGN, IC, MELTS |
Pashto | Arabic | حامد کرزی | BGN, JDEC-Afghanistan |
Urdu | Arabic | عبد السلام | BGN, IC |
Burmese | Burmese | မြန်မာ | Folk (Basis), MLCTS |
Chinese | Hanzi | 刘晓波 | Hanyu Pinyin, Wade-Giles |
Korean | Hanja Hangul |
金大中 김대중 |
BGN, Korda, McCune-Reischauer, Revised Romanization of Korean |
Hebrew | Hebrew | עִברִית | ISO 259-2:1994, Folk (Basis), ICU |
Japanese | Kanji Hiragana Katakana |
鈴木章 かづさ スズキ |
Hepburn, Kunrei |
Russian | Cyrillic | Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв | BGN, IC |
Greek | Greek | Ἀριστοτέλης | ISO 843:1997, ICU |
Thai | Thai | พระพุทธยอดฟ้าจุฬาโลก | ICU, ISO :11940-2, ISO 11940-2:2007 |
Arabic Translation Sample
The following examples illustrate Rosette Name Translator’s ability to translate names between Arabic and English depending upon the name’s language of origin.
Transliteration type | Input | Output |
---|---|---|
Person name – Arabic-origin | ابو يوسف يعقوب | Abu-Yusif Ya’qub |
Person name – English-origin | رذرفورد بي هايز | Rutherford B. Hayes |
Place name – Arabic-origin | باقة الشرقية | Baqah al-Sharqiyyah |
Organization Acronym – English-origin | بي بي سي | B.B.C. |
Sample output:
{ "translation": "Mu'ammar Muhammad Abu-Minyar al-Qadhaf", "targetLanguage": "eng", "targetScript": "Latn", "targetScheme": "IC", "confidence": 0.06856099342585828 }
Try the Demo
Deployment
Rosette Cloud
Sign up today for a free 30-day trial
The SaaS version of Rosette is rapidly implemented, low maintenance and ideal for users who wish to pay based on monthly call volume. Numerous bindings through a RESTful API are supported.
Rosette Server Edition
This on-premise private cloud deployment puts all the functionality of Rosette Cloud behind your secure firewall, and enables advanced user settings, access to custom profiles (user-specific configuration setups), and deployment of custom models.
Rosette Java Edition
For on-premise systems that need the low-latency, high-speed integration of an SDK, Rosette Java is the way to go. It has been deployed in the most demanding, high-transaction environments, including web search engines, financial compliance, and border security.
Rosette Plugins
Just plug in Rosette for instant high-accuracy multilingual search and fuzzy name search for Elasticsearch or Apache Solr.
Quality documentation and support
Our support team responds to customers in less than a business day, and is committed to a satisfactory resolution. Users have access to in-depth documentation describing all the features, with code examples and a searchable knowledge base.
Visit our GitHub for bindings and documentation.
Questions?
Email: info@basistech.com
Phone: +1-617-386-2000
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