Users guide and notes Jacob

These are my notes for making the English-Esperanto translator but I might be usefull to the same kind of people like me who knows next to nothing about linguistics.

Ive installed standtard Ubuntu packages and theyre working fine:

Using Apertium

echo "Jeg vil gå en tur" | apertium da-sv
Jag vill gå en tur

or

$ echo "Jeg vil gå en tur" | apertium -d apertium-sv-da da-sv
Jag vill gå en tur

don't use the command apertium-translator, its old and deprecated!

how to add a missing word

You will need to add the word in both the source language monodix AND on the translation dictionary.

Example: I want to add "treeview" which is an English noun.

First I check if its in the English monodict apertium-eo-en.en.dix. If it isnt we'll need to add it.

First we need to find the regular noun paradigm in english The paradigm is 'house__n'. Why 'house' ? Just because it's a memorable example.

Understanding the files

<e r="LR">

<l>kataluno</l><r>Catalan</r>

</e> <e r="LR">

<l>kataluno</l><r>Catalan</r>

</e> <e r="RL">

<l>kataluno</l><r>Catalan</r>

</e> <e r="LR">

<l>katoliko</l><r>Catholic</r>

</e> <e r="LR">

<l>katoliko</l><r>Catholic</r>

</e> <e r="RL">

<l>katoliko</l><r>Catholic</r>

</e>

13.04 It all the same!

francis.tyers: yep
 that says:
 translating left-to-right: katoliko<n><f> → Catholic<n>
 and
 katoliko<n><m> → Catholic<n>
 

13.05 mig: You could write "katalunino" to say a female Catalan person, but most people wouldnt care and would write "kataluno"

francis.tyers: translating from right-to-left, Catholic<n> → katoliko<n><GD> (GD = gender to be determined)
mig: ah
 LR = left-to-right
 the directions

13.06 francis.tyers: yeah

mig: i have undersood
francis.tyers: left-to-right = esperanto to english

Words

which is the lemma ? 13.08 mig: what is "lemma" ? (a lemming? :-)

francis.tyers: haha!
 no
 the base form
 root form
 citation form
 etc.

Why words needs also to be in the monolingual dictionary

treeview is not in the english dictionary

mig: ah
 couldnt it just suppose it to be a noun , then :-)

13.53 francis.tyers: nope

mig: or take it from the apertium-eo-en.eo.dix
francis.tyers: everything to be translated needs to be in the analyser
 how would it know the number ?
 how would it know treeview is singular and treeviews is plural ?

13.54 it could guess, but then how would it be able to distinguish between "to treeview" and "he treeviews" (which don't exist)

mig: so I need also to add the word to apertium-eo-en.en.dix.

and it has the same declination as all other verbs ?

mig: infibitive
 no, its quite skew :-)
 declination= ?

13.10 francis.tyers: conjugation

mig: I promise to learn the lingustic words within the week.
francis.tyers: haha :D
 an idea
mig: yes, all declinations (ways of conjugation) are all the same in Esperanto

TODO

13.11 mig: Ill try to go http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Monodix_basics and review the file.

 this is the apertium-eo-en.eo.dix file

13.13 Fine, Ill review it.