Google Seeks Patent on Chinese Spell Check Program

GoogleCNSpellPatAppA patent application, published on January 31, shows Google is continuing to develop for the Chinese market. The application discloses a program for spell checking non-Roman character based languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Although the summary of the invention section provides that the program may cover any non-Roman based language, the dependent claims show the application is focused on the Chinese language.

The program identifies potentially incorrect inputs, identifies alternatives, determines the proximity between the potentially incorrect input and the alternative, and computes probabilities of possible correct “word” based on the proximity measurement and optionally on a context of the possible conversion. Then it determines the most likely conversion from all the possible conversions.

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“Fault-Tolerant Romanized Input Method for Non-Roman Characters,” Wu et. al. (U.S. Patent Application No. 20080028303).