{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Q-TRANS: Query Translation Into English","authors":[{"name":"Eva-Maria M. Mueckstein","slug":"eva-maria-m-mueckstein","given":"Eva-Maria M.","family":"Mueckstein","affiliation":""}],"abstract":"Q- TRANS , which stands for Query- TRANSlation System, translates formal database queries into English to enhance the usability of both natural and formal language database access systems. Q-TRANS is designed for the database query language SQL, whose query expressions serve as an abstract representation from which an English paraphrase is generated. Q-TRANS is also intended to be part of the Transformational Question Answering System (TQA system), which provides a natural language interface for database query, analyzing and ultimately translating the English queries into SQL expressions. The concepts and methods used in Q- TRANS to arrive at a query translation are, however, independent from the TQA system except for compatibility of lexical and grammatical coverage of the paraphrases produced. The paraphrases generated are true translations of the SQL expressions which are the input to Q-TRANS and serve in a sense as deep structures that get mapped into English imperatives. The grammatical English structures Q- TRANS produces obey somewhat conflicting constraints in that they preserve as much of the SQL structure as necessary to reflect the internal logic to the user, and at the same time represent as natural English sentences as possible.","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/158","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/0158.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/158.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/bibtex/158","volume":{"slug":"1983","title":"Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 1983","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/","year":1983,"location":"Karlsruhe, West Germany","dates":"","editors":"Alan Bundy","isbn":"","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":"Natural Language","track":"Natural Language","number":158,"pages":{"first":660,"last":661},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}