From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Nov 24 19:09:03 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 25 Nov 1992 01:08:17 -0500 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9667; Wed, 25 Nov 92 01:05:00 EST Received: from UGA.BITNET by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) with BSMTP id 3712; Wed, 25 Nov 92 01:04:59 EST Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1992 00:09:03 EST Reply-To: bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu Sender: Lojban list Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was bob@GRACKLE.STOCKBRIDGE.MA.US From: bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU Subject: public domain Russian/English dictionary X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: <1w_us_NpFxP.A.OTE.at0kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Dover has printed a public domain Russian-English English-Russian dictionary of phrases and sentences. This could be very useful for Lojban, since it could be converted into a Russian/English/Lojban dictionary. This is not a dictionary in the usual sense, with simple definitions. In addition to the most common translations of words from one language to another, such as "rooka" for "hand" or "dovodeet" for "to take to", it has more than 30,000 phrases and sentences that illustrate the various meanings of the 5,000 or so words it carries from each language. Here are extracts from the entry for "hand": The first entries are for "rooka", the word for hand or arm: Where can I wash my hands? I shook hands with him and left. The business has changed hands Each English sentence has a Russian translation, in Cyrillic, with accent marks. (I won't try to illustrate them here; my aphabetic transliterations look terrible.) Then comes a subentry for another English meaning of hand, `give' or "dat'", as in: Will you hand me the pencil? Then the subentry for "farm hand" "rabochee na fyerme" I worked a couple of years as a farm hand. Then "oochasteeye": Did you have a hand in this project? In addition the entry contains sentences illustrating, among others: hand made: This rug is hand made. hour hand: The hour hand is broken. to hand down: The recipe has been handed down in our family for generations. Also, sentences for `to hand in', `to lend a hand' and more. The entry for "to have" includes sentences illustrating how to say "to have a baby", "to have a drink", and "to have to". Inspired Lojbanists could take several entries each and write Lojban sentences to match the English and Russian. This not only would create a dictionary between Lojban and two natural languages for the effort of writing just one, but would provide an excellent corpus of Lojban sentences. And provide lots of practice writing Lojban to express natural language sentences. Sad to say, I don't have time to do anything with Lojban at the moment (I'm spending what time I have learning Russian, but am far behind Lojbab). Does anyone have access to a optical character recognition scanner that could put this dictionary on line? The book is printed clearly, with few fonts, so a good Latin alphabet/Cyrillic alphabet scanner should not have much trouble with it. An online version would be much easier to work with. I am not suggesting that work on this replace the current dictionary project. Instead, I see this as a posible complement or further enhancement of the current dictionary---and something that might be interesting for a large group to work on in small pieces, if someone were to act as a central coordinator. You don't need to understand or read Russian to use this as a source for English to Lojban writing. But if you were to write a sentence in Lojban that accurately translates "Where can I wash my hands?", you would have written the Lojban translation for the similar Russian sentence. I find that it is fun to read this dictionary in small doses---not something I ever thought I would say about a dictionary! The dictionary is an unabridge republication of the War Department Technical manual TM30-944, "Dictionary of Spoken Russian", and appears to have come out of WWII. Dover titles the dictionary: A phrase and sentence dictiony of spoken Russian, Russian-English English-Russian No author listed on title page or the back of the title page. No copyright. 573 pages $10.95 paperback ISBN: 0-486-20496-0 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-59928 Best wishes! Robert J. Chassell bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu Rattlesnake Mountain Road (413) 298-4725 or (617) 253-8568 or Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (617) 876-3296 (for messages)