GEMini Atari/GEMini_Atari_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1993.iso/zip/other/translat.lzh/TRANSLAT/TRANSLAT.DOC

Text File | 1991-06-18 | 8KB | 172 lines

Translat.prg:

Translat.prg is a language translation aid designed to help those wanting to
translate documents from one language to another. It is freeware (you may
use it free, but commercial gain from this program is prohibited)

This version 1.01 is a very early version which is to say it has BUGS.
I have decided to release it now as I have other things to do and
I wont be able to finish it for a while.  The utility is written for operation
off a command line but a simple gem interface is provided for those users
who don't know what a command line interpreter is ?

WHAT IT DOES

Translat is a translation aid, it is basically a bulk search and replace tool
it has no inkling of what it is translating - it just converts words. This
alleviates the human from long tedious hours looking up a language translation
dictionary. It is hoped that the destination language syntax can then be
fixed up by the human.

HOW IT DOES IT

Translat has a dictionary of replacements in a file called translat.dct when
a word is encountered in the input file, a replacement word is looked up
and the replacement word is written to the output file.
The input is initially read in in blocks which are displayed in the input
window. The lines of text are converted, and written to the output window
and file.

HOW DO YOU WORK IT

In your cli type translat input_file output_file omiting the filenames will
result in a file-selector for you to choose your input file. Translat will
then read the dictionary, this can take some time with big dictionaries
as the routine used to handle the dictionary is VERY primative and is just
a little slow. A copyright message will be displayed during this time just
to keep you amused. (I thought of a multitasking tetris game here but somebody
might sue me for look and feel:-)

Storing the dictionary requires large amounts of memory so get those upgrades
installed, On the average I expect you will fit about 50000 words in 2 MB.

Once the dictionary is loaded Translat will attempt to convert your tex,t
providing translat knows all the words you will be pretty much ok and you
will not have to do anything. However this version comes with a minimal
(10 word ?) dictionary so you will have to build you own dictionaries if
you mail your dictionaries to me I will look into producing comprehensive
translation dictionaries to distribute with future versions.

Two conditions cause translat problems.

1. The word is not in the dictionary
2. The word has multiple definitions

In these cases a dialog box will appear which will allow you to manually
convert the word. The options are:

LOOKUP: Used if there is a spelling error in the source language, type in the
proper word in the input box and look-up the translation

SKIP: Dont translate, leave the word in the source language.

DELETE: Delete the word from the output.

DONE: Finish - add the new translation to the output text

QUIT: Abort the conversion at this point. You will be able to save the text
converted to date and the Dictionary will be updated with all the words entered
during the session

UPDATE DICTIONARY - If this is highlighted the new word you have specified will
be added to the dictionary. NOTE: The state of this button for V1.01 is ON
Certain selections (LOOKUP for instance ) turn it off. I have tried to make
this such that the default choice is correct in most cases.

In addition there are spaces for several alternative words. These can be
selected by clicking the mouse on the desired word. This is to allow multiple
definitions of the same word.


 If you used the file-selector method of invoking the program a file-selector
will appear at the end of the input file to let you specify the output
file name.



BUGS - Probably heaps - This is a VERY early test version I don't know how
well it works, here are some of the known problems.
                             n
1. Dictionary reading and lookup is VERY slow O - I have ideas to make this
more blindingly fast but they will not make it into Translat soon !

2. Adding words when exactly one word is already known is difficult at the
moment (you must add an unknown word to a document and manually update each
instance or edit the dictionary with a text editor)

3.) Under some conditions words are added to the dictionary out of order.
It would pay therefore to periodically sort the dictionary based on the key
words since a misordered dictionary will cause lookup problems, I am looking
into this.

4.) Primative support is currently provided for non english characters
umlats etc., all extended charaters are considered parts of words, (this is
probably wrong but what do you expect for free), also because the character
set is strange above 128 translat treats umlat/accent capitols as being very
different ie translat cannot currently downcase umlat characters before
looking them up, as soon as I can come up with an appropriate tolower taking
into account the warped character set I will update this, untill then multiple
entries for Upcased umlats/accents will be needed (or just change the spelling
to lower case and look up again { if you can find a way to enter an umlat char}
)???.

5.) The program is MiNT compatible and has been tested with TOS 1.4
monochrome with and without overscan Only. Thus this should work
on large screen monitors. Translat does work in colour but the dialog is
messed up. I will try to fix this in later versions (add a colour dialog box)

All bets are off with other platforms.
Please let me know any problems with other platforms and I will try to
fix them.

7.) Translat currently strips all punctuation out of the source file -
including full stops - but is does know how to capitolise first letters if
they were already capitolised.




FEATURES TO BE CONSIDERED:

To aid non foriegn language speakers I will try to add a guess option, this
will try to find a best fit for the word, some languages change word
suffixes to indicate sex or tense for example. In these cases I can try
to give you the closest known word.

I will try to add an unattended mode, Translat will use best fit methods
to try to translate the whole document without assistance, you can expect
uniformly bad translation this way but at least you will be able to background
it with mint.

partial and reverse conversions: I will later support partial conversions
this means that Translat will not attempt to translate words which are among
it definitions for the target language. Reverse conversions are more difficult
as translat can convert a word to a phrase and this does not reverse very well
I will probably implement this as another program to create a forward
dictionary from a reverse definition where a 1 to 1 relationship exists.

Multiple dictionaries. Specify which dictionary to use

Full gem interface (With a menu and everything just to slow it down some)
I may even background the search functions so you can play with your
fav breakout accessory while you are waiting :-)

A dictionary editor, sorter, merger

Having said all this, little of this will be coming soon, The bug fixes will
be out first.


All things considered the program does appear to work and gives you some
assistance at least, the dictionary is in ascii and can be editted with
an ordinary text editor. The format is \nsource_word destination phrase

R.Lunnon

[e-mail]
Centre for Product and Process Development
Queensland University of Technology
2 George St.
Brisbane Queensland Australia