Natural Language Processing (NLP)

What Does Natural Language Processing (NLP) Mean?

Natural language processing (NLP) is the ability of a computer program to understand spoken and written human language.

NLP programming automates the translation process between computers and humans by manipulating unstructured data (words) in the context of a specific task (conversation). An important goal of NLP is to help the computer to comprehend the intent -- as well as the meaning -- of a human being's written or spoken words.

NLP is an interdisciplinary field that spans across across several areas of study, including linguistics, computer science, statistics and artificial intelligence. It plays an important role in helping natural language generation (NLG) chatbot programs respond appropriately to spoken or written communication and translate text from one language to another.

Recent advancements in deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have had a significant positive impact on natural language processing.

Techopedia Explains Natural Language Processing (NLP)

The ultimate goal of NLP is to build software that will analyze, understand and generate human languages naturally, enabling communication with a computer as if it were a human. There is difficulty in developing human language translation software because language and the way words are used in different contexts is constantly changing.