Hi again Francis, Pronouns are important in a language. In my French grammars the pronouns have at least 50 % more pages than the verbs. The same applies to my English grammars. All the same, most of the education is spent on verbs. The same applies to translation systems? A great effort on getting the verb conjugations right and leaving the pronouns aside?
On Sun, Apr 22, 2012, at 18:47, Francis Tyers wrote: --snip-- > > I think it would be really great if it could be fixed. But in the > meantime, we work with what we've got. Leave the repetitive bit up to > the computer, and leave the human being to work out the hard bit. You've got a point. The hard bits are the most interesting. You wouldn't want to take the fun out of translation, would you? :-) > > > > B. > > > > > ... The translation of the personal pronoun "lui" will be either > > > > > "honom" (masculine = him) or "henne" (feminine = her). -- snip-- > > Well, it might be that I'm used to listening to non-native English, but > often Romance language speakers make his/her mistakes in English. When > the referent is obvious it doesn't really cause a problem. > > "My mum got stranded last week when his car broke." > > Unless there is a preceeding part of the discourse where another > person's car is introduced, it's quite clear who the car belongs to. > That is, the gender mistake does not effect the intelligibility of the > final translation. > Your right. --snip-- > > > > > > > > > D. > > > > >...it makes a difference if a possessive pronoun refers to the > > > > > subject or refers to someone else: > > > > > "Kalle älskar sina hundar. Niklas älskar hans hundar." = "Kalle aimes > > > > > ses chiens. Niklas aimes ses chiens." (Kalle loves his dogs. Niklas > > > > > loves his dogs. It's the same dogs, that are kept by Kalle, not by > > > > > Niklas! Same problem in English.) > > > > > > > > Someone might have encountered this problem working on e.g. the pair > > > > IS-EN or DA-EN. > > > > > > Icelandic->English we just translate 'sin' and 'hans' to 'his' I think. > > > > Yes, but the problem is the other way around: En - SV. How to translate > > "his dogs"? How to know if the dogs belongs to Kalle or to Niklas? The > > Swedish translation will imply that one of them is the owner. How do you > > tackle it in the pair Icelandic->English? > > We don't translate from English->Icelandic, only from > Icelandic->English. > The possibility of building a one way system never has occurred to me. It would significantly simplify the work if I decided to build only a Swedish to English or Swedish to French system. I will consider your idea! --snip-- > > > > > > Sorry not to be more positive, but most of what you're describing are > > > general problems with translation (and machine translation), not just > > > with Apertium. You can approximate a fix, but you're never going to get > > > it right all the time, the best you can do is get the closest > > > approximation possible. > > > > True. The reason I am interested in Apertium, is that I expected to get > > a more consistent translation than with statistical translation. I also > > expected to overcome some common errors by somehow creating a rule. But, > > as I said before, I am not sure it's the right tool for SV-FR. (SV-EN > > are closer, but there still remains some issues, as you can see.) > > Well, it will be a more consistent translation, whether it is more > consistently wrong or not is another matter ;) > > On a purely linguistic and technical level, it is not the best tool for > the job of translating Swedish<->French. > > There are other systems which would linguistically be better choices. > You could for example try setting up OpenLogos, or LOGON, or Matxin > which give you a deeper analysis. Or training Moses, which will give you > state-of-the-art SMT results. You could also try buying an off-the-shelf > system from someone like SYSTRAN or Gramtrans. I have checked the alternatives. OpenLogos has nothing for Swedish, but LOGON has both a Swedish and a French dictionary (in an early stage, I suppose). I will have to dig deeper into possible solutions for SE - FR. > > The thing Apertium has going for it is that it is (a) free software, (b) > it's easy to install [yes, try installing any of the others and you'll > see what i mean], (c) it doesn't require knowing any complicated > formalisms (HPSG, LFG) (d) you don't have to express Swedish or French > grammar in terms of Basque, (e) it's pretty well documented, and (f) it > has a pretty active developer community [if not on the mailing list, > certainly on IRC!] > > > > > > > If it's really important to translate the possessives right from > > > French->Swedish, and your readers won't be able to work it out from the > > > context, then you could look into using Constraint Grammar to do > > > anaphora resolution before passing it to the apertium-transfer. > > > > If I have understood this right, I have to build a Constraint Grammar > > from scratch. Any examples to look at? Anyone that has any experience of > > this? > > Yes, there is lots of documentation. > > > Is it possible to reuse anything from the pair Norwegian Nynorsk and > > Norwegian Bokmål? I suppose bokmål is similar to Danish and thus similar > > to Swedish. Nynorsk would probably be more different. > > You could take the Norwegian Bokmål OB Tagger and convert it to Swedish. > I'm not sure how effective this would be. I will have a look. Might be useful at least for SE - EN. Any suggestions on where to start reading? > > Regards, > > Fran > > PS. Another one I find annoying, even translating between Romance > languages are impersonal verb constructions with 'se'. e.g. "aquí se > come bien" is not the same as "ici il se mange bien", it should be "ici > on mange bien" (I think). We have a GSOC project to deal with this kind > of thing: > > http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Pronoun_verb_combinations_in_Romance_languages I agree. The sets of reflexive verbs (verbes pronominaux) vary among languages. They never are exactly the same. Yours, Per Tunedal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 _______________________________________________ Apertium-stuff mailing list Apertium-stuff@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff
