Automatic generation of English/Chinese thesaurus based on a parallel corpus in laws

The information available in languages other than English in the World Wide Web is increasing significantly. According to a report from Computer Economics in 1999, 54% of Internet users are English speakers (“English Will Dominate Web for Only Three More Years,” Computer Economics, July 9, 1999, http://www.computereconomics.com/new4/pr/pr990610.html). However, it is predicted that there will be only 60% increase in Internet users among English speakers verses a 150% growth among non-English speakers for the next five years. By 2005, 57% of Internet users will be non-English speakers. A report by CNN.com in 2000 showed that the number of Internet users in China had been increased from 8.9 million to 16.9 million from January to June in 2000 (“Report: China Internet users double to 17 million,” CNN.com, July, 2000, http://cnn.org/2000/TECH/computing/07/27/china.internet.reut/index.html). According to Nielsen/NetRatings, there was a dramatic leap from 22.5 millions to 56.6 millions Internet users from 2001 to 2002. China had become the second largest global at-home Internet population in 2002 (USʹs Internet population was 166 millions) (Robyn Greenspan, “China Pulls Ahead of Japan,” Internet.com, April 22, 2002, http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/article/0,,5911_1013841,00.html). All of the evidences reveal the importance of cross-lingual research to satisfy the needs in the near future.