[Tetum-translators] Fw: [ittimor] "The black dog barks at the star"

[Peter Gossner]

Sorry for the repeat but this is such an important mail that I wanted it
kept twice :)

Forwarded message:

Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:28:51 +0800
From: Grant Stone <address@hidden>
To: "'address@hidden'" <address@hidden>
Subject: RE: [ittimor] "The black dog barks at the star"


I'm following this project with interest and may be able to provide some
dictionaries to destroy and digitise.  Happy New Year - great to see you
with a aocially redeeming 'spare time' project that is stretching the
grey matter.

Grant

-----Original Message-----
From: Lev Lafayette [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Friday, 9 January 2004 1:14 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: [ittimor] "The black dog barks at the star"



Here's some initial thought on how the translation programme* would 
work.

The sentence is chosen as in initial hypothetical for the translation 
programme.

I have also included the words `bark' and 'star' as they can have 
multiple literal meanings; a celestial object or an asterisk in the 
case of `star' or the skin of a tree or the sound a dog makes in the 
case of bark. (A 'star' in the movie-star sense is a metaphorical 
denotation of a celestial object).

Step one.

User would input a selection of translation fields:

Case

>From English to Portuguese
>From English to Bahasa
>From English to Tetum
>From Portuguese to English
>From Portuguese to Bahasa
>From Portuguese to Tetum
>From Bahasa to English
>From Bahasa to Portuguese
>From Bahasa to Tetum
>From Tetum to English
>From Tetum to Portuguese
>From Tetum to Bahasa


Step two.

The programme would look up each word in the English sentence and 
determine the word-type (like a data type for you computer people 
<g>).

In English the sentence consists of

Article + Adjective + Noun + Verb + Preposition + Article + Noun.

Note that the programme at this stage, encountering the conflict 
between `bark' (the Noun) and `bark' (the Verb) would reject the 
possibility that two consecutive Nouns could occur, therefore the 
Verb would have to be the case - and especially before a 
Preposition.  Note however if it was a Pronoun the two could occur 
together (e.g., "She threw her book at him" - Pronoun + Verb + 
Pronoun + Noun + Preposition + Pronoun)

The programme would then reconstruct the sentence according to the 
grammatical rules of the language:

Step three.one (English-Portuguese)

Article + Noun + Adjective + Verb + Preposition + Article + Noun

Step three.two (English-Bahasa)

Noun + Adjective + Verb + Preposition + Noun


Step three.three (English-Tetum)

Noun + Adjective + Verb + Preposition + Noun

Note that for Tetum and Bahasa the programme would simple return a 
null result for the Articles.


Step four

Note that this occurs before the substitution of words.

This is the tricky bit. Words would have to tested for context, which 
would require associated fields in a sentence. I suspect that 
Adjectives or Verbs would be the best here for association.

For example, a celestial star is likely to 'shine' or be 'bright', 
but an asterisk is not. A dog is very unlikely to 'bark' at an 
asterisk, however a human may 'type' an asterisk.

Step five

Once an association is made the correct substitution can be made. 
Note that in Portuguese (as with all romance languages) Articles will 
have to be considered with Nouns.

e.g.,

(English - Portuguese)

O cão preto raspa (?) na estrela

(`raspa' is a conjunction of the Portuguese verb `scrape' - I'm not 
sure if this is the same word for a dog barking... it does work in 
Spanish however, "el perro negro raspa")
 
(English - Bahasa)

Anjing hitam salak ke bintang 

(English - Tetum)

Asu metan hatenu ba fitun.

* Yes, I'm using Commonwealth rather than U.S. spelling for 
program. ;-)



 

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