Less is more: A rule-based syntactic simplification module for improved text-to-pictograph translation

In order to enable or facilitate online communication for people with an intellectual disability, the Text-to-Pictograph translation system automatically translates Dutch written text into a series of Sclera or Beta pictographs. The baseline system presents the reader with a more or less verbatim pictograph-per-word translation. As a result, long and complex input sentences lead to long and complex pictograph translations, leaving the end users confused and distracted. To overcome these problems, we developed a rule-based simplification system for Dutch Text-to-Pictograph translation. By using recursion and applying the simplification operations in a logical way, only one syntactic parse is needed per message. Promising results are obtained.