From xod@sixgirls.org Fri Dec 07 13:05:11 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: xod@reva.sixgirls.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_2); 7 Dec 2001 21:05:12 -0000 Received: (qmail 9957 invoked from network); 7 Dec 2001 21:05:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m12.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 7 Dec 2001 21:05:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO reva.sixgirls.org) (216.27.131.50) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 7 Dec 2001 21:05:11 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by reva.sixgirls.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id fB7L5Ah19644 for ; Fri, 7 Dec 2001 16:05:10 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 16:05:09 -0500 (EST) To: Subject: Software Translation of Lojban (was: Re: [lojban] eurolinux proposing lojban for community patent In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Invent Yourself X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1138703 X-Yahoo-Profile: throwing_back_the_apple On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, PILCH Hartmut wrote: > We are not trying to prove that humans can write lojban, but that > a well written lojban text can be auto-translated to something > understandable, like Logician's English/Greek/Finnish etc. > > Since many promises concerning auto-translation have been broken in the > past, it is important to assess this possibility very objectively and > to let people understand that translating from a logical language is > really different from translating from a normal language. I am not sure that anybody would be convinced with a theoretical argument without any software to back it up. I should think we would need to at least have software that creates English from Lojban, with the result being English of a higher quality than what AltaVista Babelfish produces. Every now and then I suggest that this is actually a very important project for the jbocecmu, because it would prove that Lojban is a feasible interlingua with computer translation. But since I don't know anything about comp linguistics, I am not the one to spearhead this; all I can do it wave the pom-poms. Nick Nicholas thinks that the result of computer translation of Lojban to a Natural Language would still require a pass by a human, so it wouldn't save any money compared to what they do now, which is to use software to get a babelfish-quality result and have humans go over it. In my abject ignorance I think we could do better with Lojban. -- The tao that can be tar(1)ed is not the entire Tao. The path that can be specified is not the Full Path.