Tokenization is the process of breaking down text into smaller, meaningful units called tokens that machines can understand and process.
Why is it important?
• Computers don't understand words naturally
• We need to convert text into numbers
• Tokens are the basic units for NLP models
• Foundation for all text processing
"Hello"
Word Token
"un-" "happy"
Subword Token
"H" "e" "l" "l" "o"
Character Token
Tokenization Process
1️⃣
Text Preprocessing
Clean and normalize the input text
2️⃣
Text Splitting
Break text into candidate tokens
3️⃣
Vocabulary Building
Create a dictionary of unique tokens
4️⃣
Token Encoding
Convert tokens to numerical IDs
Key Insight:
Good tokenization is crucial for model performance. Different strategies work better for different languages and tasks!
Interactive Tokenization Demo
Tokens:
Click "Tokenize Text" to see tokens appear here...