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Re: [lojban] Dictionary format
At 07:47 PM 04/17/2001 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>> And how would you format the English-Lojban side?
>
>Dunno. Probably:
>
>animal danlu [dal, da'u]
> x1 is an animal/creature of species x2; x1 is
> biologically animate
>
> (cf. banfi, cinki, cipni, finpe, jukni, respa, since,
> mabru, bakni)
I will note that, when we finally produce a printed dictionary, economics
will demand that we use space efficiently (or the book will be priced out
of reach of most Lojbanists). That will mean small print, very little
white space, and the use of typography to set off parts of the
definition. Even with this, it would be difficult to keep the printed
dictionary down to the length of the reference grammar, which means that
the price will likely be higher.
If you're going to provide a long explanation on the English-Lojban side, it
should be in Lojban,
No one has the time to write Lojban explanations for a few thousand
words. I will be happy to get place structures for more lujvo on the
Lojban side, and use keyword text processing tools to produce the English
to Lojban entries.
This is what has been done with the longer gismu entries in the official
dictionary file.
www.lojban.org/draft-dictionary/ENGDICT.GIS
Ideally the lujvo entries will eventually approximate that form.
the rafsi should be English rafsi (such as tri- for
three), and the cross-references should be to English words.
The cross-references speak to the fact that the Lojban word given is not an
exact translation of the English word, and that the cross-referenced
entries might also be valid translations, given suitable context. English
cross-references would not convey this information. No doubt, each
cross-reference entry could be expanded by a word or two as you did with
your "picture:" example to make it more useful, but that would take a lot
of manual work. The best we could do automatically (and it would cost
valuable space) would be to use the English keyword in the manner you
suggested e.g. cf. amphibian: banfi, insect: cinki, bird: cipni, etc.)
lojbab
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org