0

We have just finished building our REST API for our Azure Search indexes. We've just been given the following new requirement:

"When the client makes a Call with a query consisting of a string of, for example, Chinese characters (or other non-Latin characters), the string would first get translated into Latin characters before being searched on and returned."

What is available, from within the Azure framework, that could facilitate something like this?

Stpete111
  • 3,109
  • 4
  • 34
  • 74
  • Can you clarify what you mean by "translated"? For example, what the string "中文" should be mapped to? – Eugene Shvets May 17 '17 at 04:34
  • @EugeneShvets-MSFT well that would simply map to "Chinese" However, most of our Chinese words are names of Chinese people. These don't always map directly to a common English word or name. In these case we just need the string of Latin characters. Let me get some specific examples for you from me team... – Stpete111 May 17 '17 at 14:57
  • @EugeneShvets-MSFT ok this won't be as complex as I first imagined. Even the person's names are straight translation. Examples: 力华庞 -> Lihua Pang. マイケル　エリクソン -> Mikael Eriksson. هبه حسام محمد الحلو -> Heba Husam Al Helou. So I think I just need to understand how to hook this Microsoft Translator: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/translator-text-api/ into our Azure Search API? Or is there more to it? – Stpete111 May 17 '17 at 16:00
  • @EugeneShvets-MSFT can you offer any insight? – Stpete111 May 18 '17 at 23:46

1 Answers1

2

This sort of "translation" is not supported within Azure Search, unfortunately. You will have to implement this "translation" in your own code, than submit a transformed query to Azure Search. Of course, the same process needs to happen at indexing time as well, so that "translated" query terms will be matched with the "translated" indexed terms.

Eugene Shvets
  • 4,561
  • 13
  • 19