--- title: "Yee Seng Chan — author profile and papers" description: "Yee Seng Chan, RTX: 2 papers on Elamur Research (2003–2007), h-index 14 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who cites them in our library." canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yee-seng-chan/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yee-seng-chan/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / Yee Seng Chan # Yee Seng Chan Yee Seng Chan works on [word sense disambiguation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/word-sense-disambiguation/) and its role in statistical machine translation. The papers here ask two linked questions. The first is how to obtain sense-labelled training examples without costly manual annotation. The second is whether resolving lexical ambiguity actually yields better translations. A recurring method is to treat the translations found in word-aligned English–Chinese parallel corpora as the labels for senses. The distinctions a system learns are then the ones that matter for choosing words in another language. The most cited paper, [Word Sense Disambiguation Improves Statistical Machine Translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/chan-2007-word-sense-disambiguation-improves-statistical/) (2007), responded to earlier studies that disagreed on this point. It plugged a strong disambiguation classifier into Hiero, a hierarchical phrase-based system, and tested it on a full Chinese-to-English task. The classifier's output enters only as extra feature scores on rules the system already has, not as new rules. A second, count-like feature offsets the penalty that a sparsely firing probability feature would otherwise impose. The earlier study, [Exploiting Parallel Texts for Word Sense Disambiguation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ng-2003-exploiting-parallel-texts-word-sense/) (2003), was written with [Hwee Tou Ng](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hwee-tou-ng/) and [Bin Wang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/bin-wang/). It examined whether aligned bilingual text could stand in for hand-tagged examples. English noun senses from WordNet that share a Chinese translation were merged, and the aligned English contexts were used to train a naive Bayes classifier. The 2007 paper is also the newest of Chan's papers here. It shifts the emphasis from gathering training data for disambiguation to putting disambiguation to work inside a translation system. Chan is currently affiliated with [RTX (United States)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/rtx/). Earlier bylines point to the [University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-illinois-urbana-champaign/) and, through the 2000s, the [National University of Singapore](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/national-university-of-singapore/). Co-authors on these papers include Hwee Tou Ng, Bin Wang and [David Chiang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-chiang/). The topics are word sense disambiguation and machine translation. Yee Seng Chan has 2 papers in our library, in 2003–2007, most of them on [Word sense disambiguation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/word-sense-disambiguation/), [Machine translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/machine-translation/); often with [Hwee Tou Ng](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hwee-tou-ng/), [Bin Wang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/bin-wang/), [David Chiang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-chiang/). 2 papers in our library · 2003–2007 [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5044932018) · [**h-index 14**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5044932018) · [22 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5044932018) · [1,400 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5044932018&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 [📄 2 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yee-seng-chan/#papers) · [🔗 363 citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yee-seng-chan/cited-by/) · [4 more in our library without a page yet](#also) · [⭐ Paper Star rank #2652](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/27/#star-2652) The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=Yee+Seng+Chan) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Yee+Seng+Chan) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Yee+Seng+Chan) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Yee+Seng+Chan) ## Affiliations [🏢**RTX** Arlington · United States 2019–2022 · 2 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/rtx/) · [🎓**National University of Singapore** Singapore · Singapore 2003–2009 · 12 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/national-university-of-singapore/) · [🎓**University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign** Urbana · United States 2010–2011 · 3 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-illinois-urbana-champaign/) From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. ## Topics [Word sense disambiguation (2)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/word-sense-disambiguation/) · [Machine translation (1)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/machine-translation/) ## Works by year ### 2000s [**2007** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/chan-2007-word-sense-disambiguation-improves-statistical/) · [**2003** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ng-2003-exploiting-parallel-texts-word-sense/) ## Papers The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library). 1. **[Word Sense Disambiguation Improves Statistical Machine Translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/chan-2007-word-sense-disambiguation-improves-statistical/)** *(2007 · 415 citations)* Earlier studies disagreed on whether word sense disambiguation (WSD) actually helps statistical machine translation. 2. **[Exploiting Parallel Texts for Word Sense Disambiguation: An Empirical Study](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ng-2003-exploiting-parallel-texts-word-sense/)** *(2003 · 209 citations)* Supervised word sense disambiguation (WSD) performs well but depends on costly manually sense-tagged examples, which must be produced separately for every ambiguous word. ## Also in our library 4 more works of theirs are in our library without a page here yet; they will appear as we publish them. ## Co-authors here 3 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first. - [Hwee Tou Ng](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hwee-tou-ng/) ×2 - [Bin Wang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/bin-wang/) - [David Chiang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-chiang/) ## Cited by Papers of our library cite their works 363 times (of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read); [20 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yee-seng-chan/cited-by/).