Development of an English-to-Ebira and Ebira-to-English Machine Translation System

Abstract

Ebira is a minority indigenous language in Nigeria. Ebiras (Ebira people) are found in Kogi, Nassarawa, Edo and Benue state, with slight variation in accent, diction, and etiology. Over the years, there has been a decline in the number of "Ebiras" that can speak Ebira language fluently and write it correctly with appropriate phonology, yet no machine-readable lexicon exists in Ebira language. The aim of this paper is to adopt the use of machine translation to support the documentation and preservation of Ebira language. Therefore, an English-to-Ebira and Ebira- to- English machine translation system was developed. A bilingual dictionary containing Ebira words was designed for a direct approach to machine translations for English to Ebira and vice-versa. Java programming language was used for the development of the system. The system was evaluated using expert-opinion in terms of translation of English text to Ebira language and Ebira terms to the English language (using words from the bilingual dictionary) by a good number of Ebiras in the Federal University of Technology Minna, Niger State, and its environs. The translation correlated relatively well with the translation quality when reviewed by Ebira native speakers. That is, the system correctly and successfully translates English text to Ebira and vice-versa using the words available in the created bilingual dictionary. A further improvement of the system to enhance its capacity for complex sentence analysis and the translation is recommended for the benefits of younger Ebiras to learn their native language.