Multi-Language Search System with Translation Cache
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Solution Overview
Problem
Search engines often fail to provide sufficient results in the user's preferred language, leading to suboptimal search experiences, especially when metadata fields are in different languages, and existing solutions like automatic translations are costly and inaccurate.
Innovation Solution
A multi-language search system that evaluates search queries to determine if a cross-language search is needed, using a translation cache to reduce latency and costs, and prioritizes results based on user-preferred languages by assigning relevancy weights to different language versions of metadata fields.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If automatic translation is used to enable cross-language search, then search coverage in user's preferred language is improved, but translation costs and latency increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-translates metadata fields from source languages into the user's preferred language before search execution. This preliminary translation action enables the search engine to directly query translated metadata without real-time translation overhead, reducing search latency while maintaining cross-language search capability
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a translation layer that acts as an intermediary between the search query and the metadata database. This translation component pre-processes metadata into the user's preferred language, mediating between the original multilingual data and the user's language requirements, thereby eliminating the need for real-time translation during search execution
2Reliability
If cross-language search is performed for all queries, then search completeness is improved, but translation costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies translation selectively based on the user's language preferences and the language distribution of the metadata corpus. Instead of uniformly translating all metadata into all possible languages, the system translates only into the specific languages that users actually use, optimizing translation resource allocation to match local language requirements
Solution Approach 2:
The patent dynamically adjusts translation parameters based on query analysis. The system evaluates whether a query warrants cross-language translation by analyzing the user's language preferences, the language of the original query, and the expected benefit of cross-language expansion, thereby changing the translation parameter from 'always translate' to 'translate when beneficial'
3Measurement precision
If search results are prioritized by user's preferred language, then search relevance is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system maintains continuous language preference tracking for each user, storing and reusing language preference information across multiple search queries. This continuity eliminates the need to re-determine language preferences for each query, reducing the computational overhead of language detection and simplifying the relevance ranking process
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for providing a multi-language search include a query receiver that receives a search query from a search user interface that includes a search term in a first language. A search results evaluator determines whether execution of the search query will produce a sufficient number of search results. A cross-language search manager, in response to determining that the processing of the search query will not produce the sufficient number of search results, obtains a first translated version of the search term, requests that a search be executed by a search engine based on at least the search term and the first translated version of the search term, receives a set of search results from the search engine based on the search; and returns the set of search results to the search user interface.