User:Blanda.alex
Contents
- 1 Google Summer of Code 2012 Application - adopting a new language pair fr-ro
Google Summer of Code 2012 Application - adopting a new language pair fr-ro[edit]
Contact information[edit]
Name: Alexandru Blanda
Email: blanda.alexandru@gmail.com
Alternative Email: ioan.blanda@cti.pub.ro
IRC: blanda(on #apertium)
Phone: +40 745628343
Why is it you are interested in machine translation?[edit]
As a student in the field of Computer Science, I believe that one of the most intriguing paths that one can take is that of Artificial Intelligence. I considered machine translation to be one of the great applications of the AI field. Also my interest comes from the fact that for my next year's final thesis I will be working on a project related to natural language processing and pattern recognition. So I considered that being part of developing a project related to a machine translation system would be a great and most useful experience.
Why is it that you are interested in the Apertium project?[edit]
In the beginning I was drawn towards the topic. Programming and linguistics is a great combination. As I stated earlier, I have a special interest in the field of natural language processing, and before entering the university I participated in a few extra-curricular activities regarding linguistics. I found out that the Apertium project has a comprehensive and well maintained documentation that proves to be of great help, and the community is very responsive to whatever problems I may have. These aspects made me consider Apertium to be a great choice for applying to GsoC 2012.
Which of the published tasks are you interested in?[edit]
Adopting an orphaned language pair: french-romanian (fr-ro)
Why should Google and Apertium sponsor it?[edit]
The language pair I would like to develop would be, in my opinion, a great addition to the Apertium set of language pairs. The fact that some work is already done on the pair, is a major advantage, and increases the chances of success of the project. Also, given the fact that the the selected language-pair is not very well represented in other free machine translation systems (see resources [1] and [2] for a list of considered machine translation systems), I believe that a fr-ro pair would be a most useful release.
How and who it will benefit?[edit]
Given the fact that I intend to create a very thorough documentation, I believe that the language pair could stand as a tutorial for developing other language pairs inside the Apertium project, such as: italian-romanian or aromanian-romanian. Also, I believe that this project will offer a valuable free educational and cultural tool, which is in the spirit of open-source and of the Apertium organization.
What do you plan to do?[edit]
I have several aspects in mind, that I plan to implement during the project:
- clean and repair the existing code(tags,paradigm definitions, transfer rules);
- add entries to the bilingual dictionary, as well as to the Romanian and French monodictionaries;
- create scripts for multiple purposes: adding data, testing;
- work on transfer rules;
- solve disambiguation problems;
- produce comprising documentation, so that the language pair can be easily maintained;
Work already done[edit]
- installed Apertium and prepared the necessary environment for developing an Apertium project;
- familiarized myself with the Apertium system by working on the coding challenge;
- got to know the community, got used to the means of communication
- read part of the available documentation ;
Proposed schedule[edit]
Before the coding period[edit]
- practice working with the Apertium system;
- stay connected with the community in order to find the best solutions, for emerging questions and problems;
- search for online resources regarding the languages;
- think of and try to implement auxiliary tools and scripts that would be useful to the project;
During the coding period[edit]
Week 1-2:(21.05-3.06)
- investigate the monolingual dictionaries and the bilingual dictionary
- clean and repair problems related to the the dictionaries: regarding entries; regarding structure of the dictionary: tags, paradigm definitions
- enhance structure with needed information
- scripts for testing entries in monolingual dictionaries
- documentation: comments on data files and scripts produced
Deliverable 1: Improved monolingual and bilingual dictionaries
Week 3-5:(4.06- 24.06)
- add new entries to the monolingual ro dictionary
- add new entries to the monolingual fr dictionary
- add new entries to the bilingual dictionary
- scripts for adding data
- scripts for testing translations between fr-ro and ro-fr
- begin work on transfer rules
- documentation: comments on data files and scripts produced
Deliverable 2: Complete monolingual dictionaries and bilingual dictionary ( in time for midterm evaluation)
Week 6-9:(25.06- 22.07)
- investigate existing transfer rules files (search for possible errors or improvements)
- identify and write needed rules
- focus on frequency
- structural transfer (insertion, deletion, substitution, reordering)
- advanced structural transfer
- identify types of disambiguation problems in both languages
- solve disambiguation problems
Deliverable 3: Updated transfer rule files
Week 10-12:(23.07- 12-08)
- manual and automated testing of the system
- run generation tests
- run vocabulary tests
- testvoc
- solve problems that may arise after testing
- write documentation: readme files and logs
Deliverable 4: Release quality fr-ro language pair and documentation ( in time for suggested "pencils down" date)
Week 13:(13.08- 19-08)
- improve documentation, last minute modifications on code
- evaluation of the language pair produced
Final submission
- REDIRECT Target page name
Bio[edit]
I am a 3rd year Undergraduate student in the field of Computer Science, at the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
Mainly, I have worked with with C/C++, Java and Python but I have also basic knowledge of PHP,Javascript,XML,HTML,CSS. I have also worked in Octave(Matlab) and some functional programming languages(Haskell, Clips, Scheme). Regarding aspects more related to machine translation systems, I was enrolled in courses that dealt with formal languages, finite state machines and automata theory (as example of applications, I would mention implementing a parser using flex).
I cannot say that I have worked on a real open-source project before. However, I am more than familiar with the open-source philosophy, particularly because I have worked mostly with open-source tools and technologies, but also because our university made it a goal to encourage any activity related to open-source. In addition, I can mention an open-source project that I started for a contest, but is still in a very incipient phase(a brief description here:http://ceata.org/proiecte/get-involved/wiki).
Non-GSOC activities[edit]
GsoC 2012 would be my primary concern this summer. The only non Gsoc-activities during the coding period would be my final exams, that end on 30 May(that means a little over a week of conflicting activities: 21-30 May). However, I am confident that I will be able to dedicate a minimum of 35 hours of week, during the summer, to working on the Apertium project.
Resources[edit]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation#Applications
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_machine_translation_applications
Coding challenge[edit]
https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/branches/gsoc2012/dutzy/
