Patent US 5,224,040

The character string of a Chinese sentence is input into the memory of a personal computer, and the first six characters of the sentence are taken from that memory and placed in a main buffer. A segment processor fetches the first three of those six characters from the main buffer and puts them into a trio buffer. The segment processor then fetches the first character from the trio buffer to match with the number dictionary. This process is continued until consecutive number characters are identified. If the first character is not a number word, the segment processor uses the three characters in the trio buffer and the segmentation program and logic to search for matched name words and regular words stored in dictionaries within the hard disk memory of the computer. The identified words are treated as candidate words and are successively sent from the computer to the word buffer for further study. The segmentation processor then applies additional sophisticated rules and logic to select meaningful words from the candidates in the word buffer, and grouped words are delivered to an output buffer. The computer fetches those words, performs the final translation by making use of translation rules and logic, and displays the translation in the preselected target language.