User:Kvld/Proposal

Contact information

• Name: Vladislav Kiryukhin
• E-mail: kiryukhinv(at)gmail.com
• IRC: kvld
• SourceForge: kvld

Why is it you are interested in machine translation?

Machine translation involves linguistics and programming, which I am interested in. It is a very important area that enables people to have information about a variety of things from different parts of world across a language barrier. MT has special value for lesser-known languages, when human translators are frequently not available.

Why is it that you are interested in the Apertium project?

I completed some tasks for Apertium during Google Code-In 2012. During that Google Code-In I was a high school student and now that I'm over 18 and studying at a university, I can dedicate time for more significant contribution.

Which of the published tasks are you interested in? What do you plan to do?

Title

New Belarusian <-> Russian language pair

Reasons why Google and Apertium should sponsor it

Currently Apertium has no language pairs with Belarusian. My plan is complete the bel-rus pair and bring it to the release quality. If you will give me chance, I think I have all to achieve this goal.

A description of how and who it will benefit in society

Performing this will give free and open source translation system from Belarusian to Russian. Both languages are official in Belarus and automation of translation may help some people in different situations and save a lot of time.
Also this language marked as "vulnerable" on UNESCO list of endangered languages and any projects in Belarusian may help to popularize it.

Work plan

Community bonding period:

• Getting more familiar with Apertium,
• Reading available documentation and studying the existing pairs,
• Finding any language resources and dictionaries which can be used,
  • Belarusian section at the Russian Wiktionary
  • Various dictionaries from slounik.org available in StarDict format
  • Grammar database from bnkorpus.info
• Checking the existing Belarusian files in Incubator,
• Adding prepositions, interjections, particles, conjunctions.

Work period:

Week	Target
Week 1	Add and check nouns.
Week 2	Add and check nouns and proper nouns. Evaluation.
Week 3	Add and check pronouns and numerals.
Week 4	Add and check adverbs. Add necessary bel-rus transfer rules. Evaluation.
Deliverable #1	Updated bel monodix, bel-ru bidix and some bel-rus transfer rules.
Week 5 (midterm)	Add and check adjectives.
Week 6	Add and check adjectives. Evaluation.
Week 7	Add and check adjectives. Start adding verbs.
Week 8	Add and check verbs. Add bel-rus transfer rules. Evaluation.
Deliverable #2	Almost finished bel monodix, bel-rus bidix and bel-rus transfer rules.
Week 9	Add and check verbs.
Week 10	Extend word coverage. Adjust transfer rules as necessary. Run testvoc. Evaluation.
Week 11	Extend word coverage. Adjust transfer rules as necessary. Run testvoc.
Week 12	Extend word coverage. Adjust transfer rules as necessary. Run testvoc.
Week 13	Cleanup code. Last fixes.
Projection completed	Finished language pair.

There is more detailed work plan here.

List your skills and give evidence of your qualifications

I'm currently a 2nd year bachelor student in Computer Science at Saint Petersburg University ITMO (Russia).
Languages: Russian (Native), Belarusian (Good), basic knowledge in Polish.
Programming skills: C, C++, Java, Python and some scripting languages. Basic knowledge in Machine Learning.

I also completed the following as part of the coding challenge:

• Created apertium-bel and apertium-bel-rus.
• Created translator for test text.
• Added nouns to monodix (about 40k words).
• Added some nouns to bidix (about 11k entries).
• Current WER (test text, on 23 March):
  • 28.81% (bel -> rus)
  • 12.43% (rus -> bel)

List any non-Summer-of-Code plans you have for the Summer

I have no non-GSoC plans for the summer and I can spend about 40-50 hours a week on task.