MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF BANGLA PARTS OF SPEECH FOR MACHINE TRANSLATION SYSTEM Tamanna Haque Nipa Department of Computer Science, Stamford University Bangladesh Dhaka, Bangladesh Muhammad Harun-Owr-Roshid Department of Network Solution, Network Hardware Solutions Limited Dhaka, Bangladesh Mohammed Zahirul Hoq Sarker Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba Manitoba, Canada Nasrin Akhter Department of Computer Science, Stamford University Bangladesh Dhaka, Bangladesh Abstract : In this paper, we have presented a set of morphological rules that will help constructing Bangla words for a Machine Translation (MT) dictionary. The rules focus particularly on the conversion of words between parts of speeches. We have shown that a word in a form of a specific part of speech can be converted to a related word in another part of speech by adding appropriate suffixes. We have presented several of such conversions. Some additional rules have also been proposed for conversion of words considering gender and number. We hope these rules will be useful in the construction of an effective and accurate MT dictionary for a Bangla to English or English to Bangla MT system. Keywords: Machine Translation; Bangla; Dictionary; Morphological Rules; Bangla Parts of Speech. 1. Introduction Now a day Bangla speaking people are found almost in every corner of the world and approximately 10% of world’s total population speaks in Bangla [1]. This implies the inevitable need of Bangla Machine Translation which in turn requires a rich MT dictionary. Unfortunately we made a very little progress in this regard. To produce good quality translations an MT system requires a good collection of words of corresponding language. 20,000 dictionary entries are considered the minimum for any commercial purpose MT system [2]. The huge collection of words can make the dictionary considerably large. On the other side the size and quality of an MT dictionary affects greatly the translation by an MT system [2]. An important issue in this regard is morphology. Morphological rules for constructing words from their roots can save us space, time and effort in considerable amount. In this paper we have proposed some morphological rules. These rules focus mainly on conversion of words between parts of speeches. We have provided rules for conversion of words between parts of speeches, between genders and between numbers. If implemented, the development of Bangla MT dictionary will be benefited from these rules. 2. MT Dictionary and Morphology The role of a dictionary in an MT system is crucial. Because it is the vocabulary coverage of a dictionary that makes the translations of an MT system useful for its users. So it is evident that the content of an MT dictionary should be extensive and the words in it must be selected properly. However Bangla language has a very rich collection of words. It has fifty two main letters, eleven vowels and consonant modifiers and above five hundred Tamanna Haque Nipa et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST) ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 2 Feb 2011 1395