This specification describes technologies relating to search systems. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of receiving a query pattern, the query pattern identifying a particular rule to interpret a particular type of query, the query pattern being in a first language; identifying a collection of queries in the first language matching the query pattern; annotating each query of the collection of queries with one or more labels; translating the collection of annotated queries in the first language into a translated collection of queries in a second language; aligning the translated collection of queries including identifying a most common term in the translated collection of queries and determining the corresponding positions of the annotations relative to the translated query terms; and extracting a translated query pattern from the aligned translated collection of queries.