Indirect contribution guide

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Many people come to us with a question like "I'm not a programmer/linguist/whatever. Is there any way I can contribute?". This document is intended to show how you can make an "indirect" contribution, by documenting language resources, helping us to build bilingual test sets, translating, promoting, etc.

About This Tutorial

This tutorial will teach you:

  • How to creating contrastive analyses.
  • How to catalog resources.
  • How to convert dictionaries.
  • How to translate.
  • How to help "Apertium" in other ways .

Basics

When in doubt, ask!

If you are participating as part of a programme such as Google Summer of Code, or Google Code-In, ask your mentor. Otherwise, ask for help on the IRC channel, or on the mailing list. Use the talk pages on the wiki -- leave your questions there, so you don't need to remember them later!

Create contrastive analyses

A 'contrastive analysis' is a set of example sentences which show the differences and similarities between a pair of languages. In a sense, it's a 'feature corpus' which we can use to develop and test rule hypotheses: if we see that the pattern noun + adjective becomes adjective + noun, then we have a good basis for building a rule. Think of it as 'raw input to a linguist': when we have a good enough idea of what a pair of languages look like, we later use these analyses to build translation rules.

One thing to note is that, when we see that something happens 9/10 times, or 8/10 times, etc., then we need to expand that exceptional part of the analysis, to get a better idea of what's happening: is it a certain class of words, or just a pure exception?

What you must do.

Your task is to make a set of test sentences in the first language, and translate them to the other. An translation in a third language may be useful in enlisting help, but is not required.

A sample sentence in wiki markup looks like this: 

* {{test|First language abbreviation|First language.|Second language.|Other translation.}}

Examples:

* {{test|ru|Чашка большая.|Чашата е голямата.|The cup is big.}}

* {{test|el|Τι γίνεσαι?|как си?|How are you?}}

* {{test|bg|Вера се оглежда в огледалото.|Вера смотрит на себя в зеркало.|Vera is looking at herself in the mirror.}}

The following is a suggested list of features to provide coverage for. All language pairs have slightly different needs, but this list should provide a good general guideline.

  1. Simple syntax
    • Copula
    • Reported speech
    • Clitic placement
  2. Pronouns
    • Personal
    • Demonstrative
    • Relative
    • Possesive
    • Reflexive
    • Interrogative
  3. Nouns
    • General
    • Indefinite and definite forms
    • 1 Noun phrases
    • Indefinite (a, some)
    • Definite (the)
    • Demonstrative (this, that)
    • Quantified (a few, no, all)
  4. Numerals
    • Cardinal
    • Ordinal
  5. Adjective
    • Comparative
    • Superlative
  6. Adverbs
  7. Verbs
    • To be
    • General
    • Indicative mood
      • Present tense
      • Imperfect tense
      • Aorist tense
      • Perfect tense
      • Pluperfect tense
      • Future tense
    • Conditional mood
    • Imperative mood
  8. Questions

If you want you can also add

  1. Interjections
  2. Punctuation marks

You can find some examples here: Bulgarian and Russian, Bulgarian and Greek.

How can you do it ?

This is quite an easy task if you know both languages. However, if you only know one language well, concentrate on translating to that language. We can always find help with the other direction later, and it helps to know what we need to find help with.

That said, if you know people who can help, ask them to help you!

Some tips:

  1. Ask your friends if they know the language you don't know.
    • If they do, ask them to help you.
    • If you know more than one person who speaks the language, you will finish the job faster and better
      • If friend is busy, queue your questions and write them later.
  2. Get a textbook for the language that you don't know.
    • For some languages this is not a good idea.
      • They are hard to find.
      • They are expensive.
    • Look on the Internet for textbooks.
      • There are many textbooks and it is a good idea to see more than one.

Create catalog resources

Create translation

Your job is to translate text to another language. To create translation the language must be native to you or you are very good at it.

Follow this tips.
  • If you don't sure for something ask native speaker or if it possible specialist.
  • You must not change the meaning what you translating.
    • Follow the meaning not he words.
  • This is write translation:
    • There is no need to hurry.
    • More time == better translation.
  • You must pay attention on language nuances
  • You must pay attention to the tenses.
  • Follow the original style:
    • If the text style is wordy,colloquial,funny... Follow it.
    • Pay attention to the punctuation marks and what is text for.
Pay attention!
  • Don't make translation if you don't know the language!
  • Don't take translation task if you know that you can't do it!
  • Don't take translation task if you don't have the time to do it!

Convert dictionaries

Your job is to translate words.
If you translate verbs, look in what tense you must translate them:

  • perf = perfective.
  • imperf = imperfective.
How to do it ?
  • It is a good idea to have friends that speak that language.
    • You can ask him some words or to check your that you had written before.
  • Look for dictionary
    • You can buy dictionary they are not very expansive.
    • You can search for free dictionary in the web.
    • It's a good idea to do the both.
  • If something is wrote somewhere check it in different source/location
Where and how to write the words ?
  • Ask your mentor about that, but you can do it in XML and send them file.

XML markup looks like this: 

 <e><p><l>First language<s n="vblex"/><s n="perf/imperf"/><s n="tv"/></l><r>Seccond language<s n="vblex"/><s n="imperf"/></r></p></e>

Examples:

Bulgarian::Russian

<e><p><l>обяснява<s n="vblex"/><s n="imperf"/><s n="tv"/></l><r>обяснять<s n="vblex"/><s n="imperf"/></r></p></e>

<e><p><l>напише<s n="vblex"/><s n="perf"/><s n="tv"/></l><r>написать<s n="vblex"/><s n="perf"/></r></p></e>

Other

Other ways to help.
  • If you find mistakes in translation or pending test.
    • Inform the mentors.
    • Correct them.
  • Ask mentors is there another way to help .
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