Natural Language Generation from Class Diagrams

Paper in proceedings, 2011

A Platform-Independent Model (PIM) is supposed to capture the requirements specified in the Computational Independent Model (CIM). It can be hard to validate that this is the case since the stakeholders might lack the necessary training to access the information of the software models in the PIM. In contrast, a description of the PIM in natural language will enable all stakeholders to be included in the validation. We have conducted a case study to investigate the possibilities to generate natural language text from Executable and Translatable UML. In our case study we have considered a static part of the PIM; the structure of the class diagram. The transformation was done in two steps. In the first step, the class diagram was transformed into an intermediate linguistic model using Grammatical Framework. In the second step, the linguistic model is transformed into natural language text. The PIM was enhanced in such a way that the generated texts can both paraphrase the original software models as well as include the underlying motivations behind the design decisions.