From robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR Thu Jun 20 05:19:56 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: robin@bilkent.edu.tr X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_3_2); 20 Jun 2002 12:19:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 71472 invoked from network); 20 Jun 2002 12:19:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m14.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 20 Jun 2002 12:19:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr) (139.179.30.24) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 20 Jun 2002 12:19:54 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id D04DC128C6 for ; Thu, 20 Jun 2002 15:19:52 +0300 (EEST) Received: from bilkent.edu.tr (ppp27.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.111.29]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 223FE12A32 for ; Thu, 20 Jun 2002 15:19:48 +0300 (EEST) Message-ID: <3D11F276.6030606@bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 15:19:18 +0000 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Automatic Lojban -> English translation? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS snapshot-20020300 From: robin X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810606 X-Yahoo-Profile: digambaranath And Rosta wrote: >I agree with Robin. Although a Lojban to English translator would be >easier than an English to Lojban or French to English, it would still >require an enormous amount of work -- a team of people working >full-time, with more Lojban texts than are currenty available. > So basically a basic Lojban translator could be done if someone comes up with a years' salary for a Lojban-fluent programmer! > > >However, it's quite easy to translate Lojban into a version where the >Lojban words are simply replaced by English/French/German equivalents. >That way, you have to learn Lojban grammar and (more onerously) >place-structures, but not the actual vocab. > This would be do-able - basically just a matter of combining the parser and the glosser. I don't think much Lojban knowledge would be required to understanfd the output. > Hence although Lojban >is not a magical translational interlanguage, it could be quite effective >as a written/electronic lingua franca. > .ie robin.tr > > >--And. > >>>>pmak0 06/20/02 07:11am >>> >>>> >--- In lojban@y..., robin wrote: > >>>>Since Lojban is supposed to be unambiguously parsible, would it be >>>>theoretically possible to write a computer program that parses Lojban and >>>>outputs readable English (or any other language) without loss of meaning? >>>> >>I'd say readable and grammatical, but not idiomatic. We already have >>parsers and glossers; all that is needed is something that will generate >>the English syntax. Even so, it would probably be a long time before we >>had anything remotely resembling natural-sounding English. >> > >I was thinking this: > >If people make a Lojban -> English translator, and then also a Lojban -> German, -> French, -> Spanish, -> Japanese, -> every major language translator, then Lojban becomes very powerful. > >Because then anyone who can write in Lojban can have it automatically machine-translated to all those target languages, and it will be understandable. I'm guessing this would be a step ahead of current machine translation (which tends to produce incomprehensible junk), if http://world.altavista.com/ is any indication of the current state-of-the-art. > > > >To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com > >Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > > > > >To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com > >Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > > > -- "It suits the poet himself to be dutifully chaste, his verses not necessarily so at all" - Catullus Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Üniversitesi Ankara 06533 http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin