Query expansion and query translation as logical inference

A number of studies have examined the problems of query expansion in monolingual Information Retrieval (IR), and query translation for crosslanguage IR. However, no link has been made between them. This article first shows that query translation is a special case of query expansion. There is also another set of studies on inferential IR. Again, there is no relationship established with query translation or query expansion. The second claim of this article is that logical inference is a general form that covers query expansion and query translation. This analysis provides a unified view of different subareas of IR. We further develop the inferential IR approach in two particular contexts: using fuzzy logic and probability theory. The evaluation formulas obtained are shown to strongly correspond to those used in other IR models. This indicates that inference is indeed the core of advanced IR.