Multilingual Document Retrieval System and Method Using Semantic Vector Matching

A document retrieval system where a user can enter a query, including a natural language query, in a desired one of a plurality of supported languages, and retrieve documents from a database that includes documents in at least one other language of the plurality of supported languages. The user need not have any knowledge of the other languages. Each document in the database is subjected to a set of processing steps to generate a language-independent conceptual representation of the subject content of the document. This is normally done before the query is entered. The query is also subjected to a (possibly different) set of processing steps to generate a language-independent conceptual representation of the subject content of the query. The documents and queries can also be subjected to additional analysis to provide additional term-based representations, such as the extraction of information-rich terms and phrases (such as proper nouns). Documents are matched to queries based on the conceptual-level contents of the document and query, and, optionally, on the basis of the term-based representation. The query's representation is then compared to each document's representation to generate a measure of relevance of the document to the query.