Translating Formal Software Specifications to Natural Language A Grammar-Based Approach

We describe a system for automatically translating formal software specifications to natural language. The system produces natural language which is acceptable to a human reader, and it supports byhand optimization by users who are not experts of our system. The translation system is implemented using the Grammatical Framework, a grammar formalism based on Martin-Löf’s type theory. We show that this grammar-based approach scales well enough to handle a non-trivial case study: translating the Object Constraint Language specifications of the Java Card API into English.

[1]  Peter Ljunglöf,et al.  Expressivity and Complexity of the Grammatical Framework , 2004 .

[2]  Gilles Kahn,et al.  Extracting Text from Proofs , 1995, TLCA.

[3]  Robert Dale,et al.  Building applied natural language generation systems , 1997, Natural Language Engineering.

[4]  Wojciech Mostowski,et al.  Specifying JAVA CARD API in OCL , 2004, Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci..

[5]  Erik Poll,et al.  Towards a Full Formal Specification of the JavaCard API , 2001, E-smart.

[6]  Bernhard Beckert,et al.  The KeY tool , 2005, Software & Systems Modeling.

[7]  Aarne Ranta,et al.  An Extensible Proof Text Editor , 2000, LPAR.

[8]  Aarne Ranta,et al.  An Authoring Tool for Informal and Formal Requirements Specifications , 2002, FASE.

[9]  Aarne Ranta,et al.  Multilingual Syntax Editing in GF , 2003, CICLing.