From rpc@digitalkingdom.org Thu Dec 13 15:13:22 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: richard@rrbcurnow.freeuk.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_2); 13 Dec 2001 23:13:19 -0000 Received: (qmail 25176 invoked from network); 13 Dec 2001 23:13:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m10.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 13 Dec 2001 23:13:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO scrabble.freeuk.net) (212.126.144.6) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 13 Dec 2001 23:13:21 -0000 Received: from du-009-0153.freeuk.com ([212.126.152.153] helo=rrbcurnow.freeuk.com) by scrabble.freeuk.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16Ef2V-0005De-00 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Thu, 13 Dec 2001 23:13:20 +0000 Received: from richard by rrbcurnow.freeuk.com with local (Exim 2.02 #2) id 16Edn9-00009T-00; Thu, 13 Dec 2001 21:53:23 +0000 Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 21:53:23 +0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: Software Translation of Lojban (was: Re: [lojban] eurolinux proposing lojban for community patent Message-ID: <20011213215323.B129@rrbcurnow.freeuk.com> Mail-Followup-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: ; from xod@sixgirls.org on Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 12:56:00PM -0500 X-Mailer: mutt/1.2i (Linux 2.0.36 i486) Sender: Richard Curnow From: Richard Curnow X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=85274821 X-Yahoo-Profile: richard_p_curnow On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 12:56:00PM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote: > > > > Good question. I can't answer until the code is written. Take a look at > > > the English output from jbofi'e/cmafi'e. > > > > I say the English isn't yet quite at the level of Babelfish. It's more Oh, you are being far too kind to jbofi'e!! > like a word-for-word; a non-Englishistic word order of the Lojban would > destroy the output. The first part of this project is to write a Yes, the English that's generated is pretty much a word-for-word substitution. I did it this way from the outset because I wanted the tool to be useful for learning what the words meant. I thought a bridi-to-sentence translation would lose the association of which words meant what, making the tool less useful for actually learning the word meanings. Plus, it would have been much harder to write. There are a few special cases that are handled, e.g. {le mi zdani} is converted to {the house of me}, but these are hardly enough to make the output flow as English. > pre-processor that rearranges the Lojban to an Englishistic word order. tugni > > Next, the English glosses must be context-dependent. i ji'a tugni cai Another big issue is that currently, the sumti are tagged with a reminder of what their place in the selbri mean. These would need writing as prepositions instead to get useful English out. -- Richard. ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- Richard P. Curnow | C++: n., An octopus made by Weston-super-Mare, UK | nailing extra legs on a cat. http://www.rrbcurnow.freeuk.com/ |