User talk:Muki987

Jimregan's remarks

'With this knowledge we can construct the English' -- How? You don't seem to have given thought to that part.

'háza (his, her, its house repeat all previous to this) - 56' -- it strikes me as a) unlikely that you can chain all possible possessives in this manner and b) that you can do something useful that will convey an understandable meaning in another language even if it is.

'házas (married- repeat all previous for this up to here, except the last 2) 1680' -- a married house? Really?

'házacska' -- are there no lexicalised diminutives in Hungarian? I can theoretically add '-let' to any noun in English, but 'piglet' has a separate translation to most languages, and 'hamlet' is not a diminutive of 'ham'.

Just because you can theoretically infer meaning from an analysis doesn't mean that results will translate. -- Jimregan 05:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

To Jimregan

>'With this knowledge we can construct the English' -- How? You don't seem to have given thought to that part.

Of course I did. Whatever I can do as a human translator, the machine can also do, if I tell him how. I am absolutely optimistic in the fact, and looking for the proper technology.

Great. 'To a person with a hammer, all problems look like nails'. I say that Hunmorph is your hammer; you are mixing derivational processes with agglutination and 'normal' morphology. Just because all of these things can be treated the same doesn't mean it always makes sense to do so, which is the point underlying everything I said. -- Jimregan 12:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

>'háza (his, her, its house repeat all previous to this) - 56' -- it strikes me as a) unlikely that you can chain all possible possessives in this manner and b) that you can do something useful that will convey an understandable meaning in another language even if it is.

ház- házam, házad, háza, házunk, házatok házuk (my house, your house, his, her its house, our house, your hous their house) All relations to MY HOUSE are then expressed, as in the case of ház: házban- házamban házra- házamra etc... It is simple and understandable in all cultur languages.

You aren't addressing my point. 'repeat all previous to this', implying that you can have some combination meaning 'my your his their house'. -- Jimregan 12:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

>'házas (married- repeat all previous for this up to here, except the last 2) 1680' -- a married house? Really?

That word is a bit exception, since it has two meanings házas means married, and also a man/woman, who has a house In case if ing (shirt) inges means someone, who wears a shirt

Then it's a derivation, and better treated as a separate word. -- Jimregan 12:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

>'házacska' -- are there no lexicalised diminutives in Hungarian? I can theoretically add '-let' to any noun in English, but 'piglet' has a separate translation to most languages, and 'hamlet' is not a diminutive of 'ham'.

acska or ikó is the diminutive. It is the same thing as pig-piglet.

I know what a diminutive is; did you understand my question? 'piglet' is a diminutive of pig, but it is a separate word in its own right, which would have its own translation -- it is lexicalised. Many (most) other diminutives are unproductive, and can be safely treated in terms of the original word. -- Jimregan 12:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

>Just because you can theoretically infer meaning from an analysis doesn't mean that results will translate. -- Jimregan 05:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I translated so much already, that I can say: You can not say anything in any cultur language, that can not be translated into an other one.

I hope, you do not want to stress that there are untranslatable things? I would strongly disagree with that assumption, and would ask you to give me at least one example. Muki987 08:13, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, let me refine what I meant: the results won't translate in a meaningful way. There are all sorts of ways of inferring from derivational processes what a word 'means', but they tend to be useful only to linguists/translators who can then determine the best way to represent that in the target language.

Yes, there are certain words that are not directly translatable between languages: their concepts may be conveyed in other ways, but it's an explanation, not a translation. -- Jimregan 12:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

This is rather off the topic of the discussion, this page is more to discuss methods of representing agglutinative morphology in Apertium, rather than the translation problems of agglutinative languages (which are also interesting, but better reserved for another page, or the mailing list). :) - Francis Tyers 08:21, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Glad to hear, that you are convinced, apertium technology is suitable for agglutinative languages. Having gone thru the English-SerboCroatian example I was not that sure. I am at the moment in the evaluation phase, and I am looking for all existing technologies. At present in my opinion google translation technology with its statistical, grammar free approach will never have the quality of a grammar oriented one, like apertium. It will for ever remain on the surface, with no real improvement perspective. However, for some situations it is very helpful. That was my first step in the direction. We can continue this subject on my discussion page, if Jimregan wants. Muki987 10:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Regarding other free grammar-focussed MT engines, you might also check out and Matxin. Open Logos has the downside of not supporting UTF-8 and not having very active development, while Matxin requires a dependency grammar to be written in Freeling format. If you want to go from English→Hungarian then this might be the answer, as they already have one written for English, but for Hungarian→English, it might take some extra development time. The Constraint grammar formalism for disambiguation and syntactic annotation might also be interesting. I'm quite happy to discuss other options and if you have any questions, please contact us on the mailing list, personally or through IRC. - Francis Tyers 10:36, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

PS. Are you the one asking on the hunmorph list about generation ('morp visszafele')? :) - Francis Tyers 12:00, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am an old language "rabbit" :-) Peter H. says, hunlex knows something similar, we are waiting for Victor, the author, he might know..... Muki987 18:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)