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# Translating near-synonyms: Possibilities and preferences in the interlingua

**Authors:** Philip Edmonds · **Year:** 1998 · **Venue:** arXiv cs/9811008; Proceedings of the AMTA/SIG-IL Second Workshop on Interlinguas **Link:** [arxiv.org/abs/cs/9811008](https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9811008) · **Licence:** copyrighted — summary only

[**11** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W1551975859) openalex · 2026-10-18[**3** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/edmonds-1998-translating-near-synonyms-possibilities-preferences/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[arXiv:cs/9811008 · Proceedings of the AMTA/SIG-IL Second Workshop on Interlinguas, October 1998](https://openalex.org/S4306400194)

- [Publisher's page](https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9811008)
- [PDF](https://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/9811008)
- [arXiv cs/9811008](https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9811008)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1551975859)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Philip Edmonds](https://openalex.org/A5103531667) h 12 · 1429 citations · 35 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper argues that an interlingual representation must mark some parts of a situation's meaning as possibilities, or preferences, and not only as necessary constraints. In translation a source word often has several target near-synonyms, such as the French "fournir" with provide, supply, furnish, offer and volunteer, and each carries its own nuance: foresight, replacement, fitting something out, generous giving. A faithful translation needs to know which nuances a word can convey in which context. Edmonds proposes a representation in which the situation is definite, and each possibility has a frequency (never, sometimes, always), a strength (weak, medium, strong), a type (emphasis, suggestion, implication, denotation) and a concept. Style and attitude are separate attributes. Lexical choice then becomes a matter of choosing the word whose nuances fit the possibilities. The paper has examples taken from two dictionaries of synonyms and no quantitative evaluation.

## Ideas

- I1. Keep nuance entries on meta tokens: frequency, strength and type, learned from each author's lines. A merge of near-synonyms keeps them, so the encoder can choose the target word whose nuance matches. Measure on the Bible pairs which merged concepts differ in nuance across authors.
- I2. Refuse merges across different nuance profiles. A lexicon merge of two concepts that differ in strength or type is probably noise, as the be/have merges already are. Make the merge check compare nuance profiles and count how many merges it removes.
- I3. Add the nuance as a key of the most specific context in the encoder's back-off, so that a word with a strong nuance is chosen only where the context carries it.

## For Mova

The places are `tools/translate/meta.rs` (the merges) and `profile.rs` (the encoder's back-off). I1 and I2 are the lexicon-residual idea of open problem 2 with a new check on what a merge changes. The style part of the paper is open problem 8, the style deltas per register. The paper gives no counts, so the merge audit has to be measured on Mova's own pairs.

Topics: [Machine translation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/machine-translation/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [arXiv cs/9811008](https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9811008)

```
@misc{edmonds1998translating,
  title = {{Translating near-synonyms: Possibilities and preferences in the interlingua}},
  author = {Edmonds, Philip},
  year = {1998},
  eprint = {cs/9811008},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9811008}
}
```

- [← previous Acquiring a Formality-Informed Lexical Resource for Style Analysis](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/eder-2021-acquiring-formality-informed-lexical-resource/)
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## References

7 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. René Bailly. 1970. Dictionnaire des synonymes de la langue française. Paris Larousse. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Rene%CC%81+Bailly%2E+1970%2E+Dictionnaire+des+synonymes+de+la+langue+franc%CC%A7aise%2E+Paris+Larousse%2E)
2. Ronald E. Batchelor and Malcolm H. Offord. 1993. Using French Synonyms. Cambridge University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ronald+E%2E+Batchelor+and+Malcolm+H%2E+Offord%2E+1993%2E+Using+French+Synonyms%2E+Cambridge+University+Press%2E)
3. Henri Bénac. 1956. Dictionnaire des synonymes. Paris Hachette. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Henri+Be%CC%81nac%2E+1956%2E+Dictionnaire+des+synonymes%2E+Paris+Hachette%2E)
4. Chrysanne DiMarco, Graeme Hirst, and Manfred Stede. 1993. The semantic and stylistic differentiation of synonyms and near-synonyms. In AAAI Spring Symposium on Building Lexicons for Machine Translation, pages 114–121, Stanford, CA, March. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Chrysanne+DiMarco%2C+Graeme+Hirst%2C+and+Manfred+Stede%2E+1993%2E+The+semantic+and+stylistic+differentiation+of+synonyms+and+near%2Dsynonyms%2E+In+AAAI+Spring+Symposium+on+Building+Lexicons+for+Machine+Translatio)
5. Bonnie J. Dorr. 1994. Machine translation divergences: A formal description and proposed solution. Computational Linguistics, 20(4):597–634. Philip Edmonds. forthcoming. Semantic Representations of Near-Synonyms for Automatic Lexical Choice. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Bonnie+J%2E+Dorr%2E+1994%2E+Machine+translation+divergences%3A+A+formal+description+and+proposed+solution%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+20%284%29%3A597%E2%80%93634%2E+Philip+Edmonds%2E+forthcoming%2E+Semantic+Representations+of+Ne) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/dorr-1994-machine-translation-divergences-formal-description/)
6. Michael Elhadad, Kathleen McKeown, and Jacques Robin. 1997. Floating constraints in lexical choice. Computational Linguistics, 2(23):195–240. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Michael+Elhadad%2C+Kathleen+McKeown%2C+and+Jacques+Robin%2E+1997%2E+Floating+constraints+in+lexical+choice%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+2%2823%29%3A195%E2%80%93240%2E)
7. Philip B. Gove, editor. 1973. Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms. G. & C. Merriam Co. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Philip+B%2E+Gove%2C+editor%2E+1973%2E+Webster%E2%80%99s+New+Dictionary+of+Synonyms%2E+G%2E+%26+C%2E+Merriam+Co%2E)