Muke Tever wrote:
Sj <2.718281828(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[Interlingua]: ministro; [Japanese]: 大臣
(だいじん, daijin);
Will users of non-Roman scripts be able to see transliterations in
their own scripts, or will they have to be stuck with Roman?
When you look at the current practice in the nl:wiktionary, you will
find that the different scripts are supported. This will also be the
case for Ultimate Wiktionary. More interesting is how a right to left
implementation will look like, like Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew ..
== [Dutch] ==
minister ([n.]) 1. [A person commissioned by the government for
public service.]
"Zware voet jaagt minister Anciaux uit de bocht."
Hopefully there's space for a translation of this example
in the user's language.
There will be room for idiom, this line is problematic in that the
meaning of "zware voet" is not clear in its own right without context.
So as idiom it is not really great.
b) content between || double bars || is stored
in the database, so
that the two lists of translations for "minister (English, n., 2)"
"minister (Dutch, n., 1)" are actually referencing the same list of
database translations [marked above by a double asterisk **]
This practice
will not be in the UW. Every meaning gets its own list of
translations. The practices leads to many examples in the English
wiktionary where the translation is absolutely wrong. This is
particularly true when later meanings are added.
What exactly is the translation table attaching to?
The definition
number? The auto-translating definition? or the individual language's
translation of the definition? If the English definition is improved
by someone, made more specific (and hopefully it would be) nothing
stops a Dutch editor from adding translations (in several languages
even) that relate only to the older definition that was faithfully
done into his language. Also, the English editor mightn't even think
to check an added translation--does he know that the Dutch editor isn't
translating from the same definition?
Meaning exist on a global level. When a meaning is added, it will be
universally seen to be there. Meanings are linked to a word.
Translations will be linked to meanings.
* All synonymous definitions would share a single
list of
translations, so that this list need not be pasted 100 times (and
updated 100 times for each update).
Though all non-synonymous translations may have to be cut-and-pasted
as many times as necessary for whatever near-matches apply. E.g.
Span. "tu"
has to be given as the translation for the definition "second person
pronoun"
(Eng "you"), for the definition "second person singular pronoun"
(Lat.
"tu"),
for the definition "second person singular familiar pronoun" (OldEng
"þú"),
for the definition "second person singular masculine pronoun" (Heb.
attah),
for the definition "second person singular feminine pronoun" (Arab.
anti),
for the definition "second person familiar masculine pronoun" etc...
Meanwhile "attah" can't go under the table for "second person
singular
feminine pronoun", and so forth.
And that's just a word with concrete semantics. When it comes to
something a little more fluid, like "street", say, it might be more
difficult.
[1] There is a difficult question, which we are
ignoring for now :
just how precisely do all the translations of "minster (English, n.,
2)" have synonymous definitions? When are two different words ever
truly synonymous? But that is a discussion for another month.
Even when
words are not "truly" synonymous for some, they may be "truly"
synonymous for others. Some words have only a distinct meaning in
certain subcultures. This can be adressed by giving a word multiple
meanings. The truly synonymous meaning and the slightly differing meaning.
A minister is a special case. Nouns that refer to specific referents
are likely to have synonymous definitions, but they're relatively
rare; most words won't have ready one-word translations so easily. Try:
walk, run, saunter, dash, sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop (varying
degrees of the same kind of action); die, expire, pass away, kick the
bucket, buy the farm (varying degrees of the formality of an action);...
sludge, slush, slime, mush, slurry... (various specific referents in the
same close semantic field) -- different languages will handle them all
differently (though possibly the common European languages will share
more gracefully than others).
When it comes to explain what words like walk, run, saunter, dash,
sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop mean, it helps when you use
methodology used in thesauri: some terms are included in others some may
be specific to certain animals. This is something we hope to achieve
with Ultimate Wiktionary. The GEMET thesaurus uses a basic set of
relations. These will be hopefully a start for what will be an
interesting experiment.
*Muke!
Thanks,
GerardM