User:Esteth

Hi there. I'm Adam Copp, a Computer Science undergraduate fromt the university of St. Andrews, in scotland. You'll find me on the IRC channel under the name Esteth.

Application so far:

Name: Adam James Copp (username: Esteth)

E-mail address: adam.copp@gmail.com

Other information that may be useful to contact you: Windows Live Messenger username is adam.copp@gmail.com

Why is it you are interested in machine translation? It's incredibly frustrating to me when I'm looking for information online and what I want isn't available, or it's available, but in a form I can't understand. I can only imagine what this is like for those who cannot read english fluently, since much of the web, particularly around the topic of computer programming is written in english.

Why is it that you are interested in the Apertium project? Of all the projects I was interested in, Apertium had the most helpful, immediately inviting community. I feel that working with the people involved would be pleasant, rather than frustrating. With Apertium, I feel that I'd be part of a community, rather than feeling like an outsider.

Which of the published tasks are you interested in? What do you plan to do? I'd like to work on format filters. I plan to add new filters for LaTeX and MediaWiki. Hopefully also ReStructuredText files.

Proposal:

Developing additional format filters for Apertium

For Apertium to successfully translate documents, it needs to know which parts of the document are translatable text, and which parts of the document are just formatting text (HTML tags, for instance), or else it would try to translate parts of the document which are meant for machine consumption rather than human consumption, and probably render the document unopenable. I propose to develop two new format filters. One for MediaWiki and one for LaTeX. If time permits, I would also like to develop a format filter for ReStructuredText.

This project deserves sponsorship because it will further the core goal Apertium. That is, to bring existing content to more people. Machine translation for documents in LaTeX and mediaWiki format would allow for journals, articles and wikis to be automatically translated to any language Apertium supports. This will broaden access to a whole host of content that would otherwise be too difficult to translate.

Include a proposal, including

   * a title,
   * reasons why Google and Apertium should sponsor it,
   * a description of how and who it will benefit in society,
   * and a detailed work plan (including, if possible, a brief schedule with milestones and deliverables).Include time needed to think, to program, to document and to disseminate. List your skills and give evidence of your qualifications. Tell us what is your current field of study, major, etc. Convince us that you can do the work. In particular we would like to know whether you have programmed before in open-source projects. 

List any non-Summer-of-Code plans you have for the Summer, especially employment, if you are applying for internships, and class-taking. Be specific about schedules and time commitments. we would like to be sure you have at least 30 free hours a week to develop for our project: I have no plans for the summer other than a week's holiday. I should be able to spend 30 free hours a week easily, aside from the week on holiday. If nessecary, it would be possible to compensate for this week by doing a few extra hours in other weeks.