Bilingual dictionary

Below you will find some notes on how to work with bilingual dictionaries in Apertium, they aren't complete but should give an overview of the basic cases.

Two genders for each language

If both of the languages involved have two genders, the following patterns are likely:

Nouns

Noun has one gender in language $x$ and one gender in language $y$ and the same number pattern in both

There will probably be one entry in the bilingual dictionary, in either of the following patterns:

    <e><p><l>skingomz<s n="n"/><s n="f"/></l><r>radio<s n="n"/><s n="f"/></r></p></e>
    <e><p><l>skinwel<s n="n"/><s n="m"/></l><r>télévision<s n="n"/><s n="f"/></r></p></e> 

Basically, lemma in language $x$ on the left and lemma in language $y$ on the right. In the first example the gender does not change, but we include it anyway (to make the dictionaries more useful for people who want to re-use them). In the second example the gender changes.

Noun has two genders in language $x$ and one gender in language $y$ and the same number pattern in both

There will probably be three entries in the bilingual dictionary, in the following pattern:

    <e r="LR"><p><l>adeiladour<s n="n"/><s n="m"/></l><r>architecte<s n="n"/><s n="mf"/></r></p></e>
    <e r="LR"><p><l>adeiladour<s n="n"/><s n="f"/></l><r>architecte<s n="n"/><s n="mf"/></r></p></e>
    <e r="RL"><p><l>adeiladour<s n="n"/><s n="GD"/></l><r>architecte<s n="n"/><s n="mf"/></r></p></e>

The symbol mf indicates that the word is the same in masculine and feminine genders, this is defined in the monolingual dictionary of the language in question. The symbol GD stands for "gender to be determined". This pattern basically says, from language $x\rightarrow y$ translate the masculine and feminine of "adeiladour" to the masculine/feminine of "architecte". From language $y\rightarrow x$ translate the masculine/feminine "architecte" to "adeiladour" with the gender to be determined by transfer rules.

Noun has two genders in language $x$ and two genders in language $y$ and the same number pattern in both

In some bilingual dictionaries you will find two entries, like:

    <e><p><l>studier<s n="n"/><s n="m"/></l><r>étudiant<s n="n"/><s n="m"/></r></p></e>
    <e><p><l>studier<s n="n"/><s n="f"/></l><r>étudiant<s n="n"/><s n="f"/></r></p></e>

and in others, one entry like:

    <e><p><l>studier<s n="n"/></l><r>étudiant<s n="n"/></r></p></e>

There are various disadvantages and advantages to either one, but basically it works the same as in the first example.