Using an abstract language as an basis for translations have been tried before, and is almost as hard as translating between two common languages.

There are two really hard problems, it is the implied references and the cultural context. An artificial language can get rid of the implied references, but it tend to create very weird and unnatural expressions. If the cultural context is removed, then it can be extremely hard to put it back in, and without any cultural context it can be hard to explain anything.

But yes, you can make an abstract language, but it won't give you any high quality prose.

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 8:09 AM Felipe Schenone schenonef@gmail.com wrote:

This is quite an awesome idea. But thinking about it, wouldn't it be possible to use structured data in wikidata to generate articles? Can't we skip the need of learning an abstract language by using wikidata?

Also, is there discussion about this idea anywhere in the Wikimedia wikis? I haven't found any...

On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 3:44 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:

...

Forwarding because this (ambitious!) proposal may be of interest to people on other lists. I'm not endorsing the proposal at this time, but I'm curious about it.

Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com Date: Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 6:32 PM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia in an abstract language To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Semantic Web languages allow to express ontologies and knowledge bases in a way meant to be particularly amenable to the Web. Ontologies formalize the shared understanding of a domain. But the most expressive and widespread languages that we know of are human natural languages, and the largest knowledge base we have is the wealth of text written in human languages.

We looks for a path to bridge the gap between knowledge representation languages such as OWL and human natural languages such as English. We propose a project to simultaneously expose that gap, allow to collaborate on closing it, make progress widely visible, and is highly attractive and valuable in its own right: a Wikipedia written in an abstract language to be rendered into any natural language on request. This would make current Wikipedia editors about 100x more productive, and increase the content of Wikipedia by 10x. For billions of users this will unlock knowledge they currently do not have access to.

My first talk on this topic will be on October 10, 2018, 16:45-17:00, at the Asilomar in Monterey, CA during the Blue Sky track of ISWC. My second, longer talk on the topic will be at the DL workshop in Tempe, AZ, October 27-29. Comments are very welcome as I prepare the slides and the talk.

Link to the paper: http://simia.net/download/abstractwikipedia.pdf

Cheers, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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