A comprehensive survey on cross-language information retrieval system

Abstract

Cross language information retrieval (CLIR) is a retrieval process in which the user fires queries in one language to retrieve information from another (different) language. The diversity of information and language barriers are the serious issues for communication and cultural exchange across the world. To solve such barriers, Cross language information retrieval system, are nowadays in strong demand. CLIR is a subset of Information Retrieval (IR) system. Information Retrieval deals with finding useful information from a large collection of unstructured, structured and semi-structured data to a user query where the query is a set of keywords. Information Retrieval can be classified into different classes such as Monolingual information retrieval, Bi-Lingual Information Retrieval, Multilingual information retrieval and Cross language information retrieval. This paper focuses on the various IR variants and techniques used in CLIR system. Further, based on available literature, a number of challenges and issues in CLIR have been identified and discussed. It gives an overview of the advantages, limitations, tools available in CLIR research. It also describes new application areas of CLIR such as medical, multimedia, question answering system etc. The need for exploring and building more specialized information system that enable speakers of an Odia language to discover valuable information beyond linguistic and cultural barriers. This study is aimed at building an experimental CLIR system between one of the under-resourced language (i.e. Odia) and one of the most commonly used online language (i.e. English) in future.