This paper introduces Wiki-Transpose, a query translation system for cross-lingual information
retrieval (CLIR). Wiki-Transpose rely only on Wikipedia as information source for translations. The main goal
of this paper is to check the coverage ratio of Wikipedia against specializedqueries that are related to medical
domain. Wiki-Transpose was evaluated using bothEnglish and Portuguese medical queries. Queries are mapped
into both English and Portuguese Wikipedia concepts. Experiments showed that Wikipedia coverage ratio of
queries is inversely proportional to the query size. Wikipedia coverage of single English term query is about
81%, and 80% for single Portuguese term query. This ratio is decreased when the number of terms in query
increased. However in the case of query translation, Wikipedia showed a comparative performance for (English
– Portuguese) and (Portuguese – English) translation. In English – Portuguese translation, Wikipedia showed
coverage ratio around 60% for single term queries, compared to 88% for Portuguese – English single term
queries. The translation coverage ratio is also decreased when number of terms in query increase |
