How to get started with lexical selection rules

Choose your words

Before you start making lexical selection rules, you first want to choose a word in your source language (e.g. English) which has more than one translation in your target language (e.g. Spanish). For example

• argument → discusión
• argument → polémica
• argument → argumento

Think about context

The words around our word often help us decide how to translate it, for example, a verb might inform us of how to translate a noun, or a noun might inform us of how to translate an adjective.

If we say "to have an argument", then it probably means "discusión", whereas if we say "to accept the argument", then you probably want to translate it as "argumento".

Try a parallel corpus

You can look at which contexts are used in one translation, but not another by looking at a parallel corpus.