A statistical translation model (TM) may receive a parse tree in a source language as an input and separately output a string in a target language. The TM may perform channel operations on the parse tree using model parameters stored in probability tables. The channel operations may include reordering child nodes, inserting extra words at each node (e.g., NULL words) translating leaf words, and reading off leaf words to generate the string in the target language. The TM may assign a translation probability to the string in the target language.