Hoi, This is the kind of reply that is helpfull. So I am really pleased to answer these questions. For the understanding of how I think about words, and to a large extend how UW may work, you have to appreciate that language word and meaning relate to each other. Highest in the order is the "language", the language has "word"s, a word has "meaning"s. Meanings have "translations". A translation is nothing more, nothing less than a relation to other words. In a list of translations, only the word will be shown. To get the full meaning of the translation, you have to go to the meaning of this word to appreciate all its subtelties.
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Muke Tever wrote:
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Muke Tever wrote:
Sj 2.718281828@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 ..
No, I know the scripts are supported. I meant, in the translation list, if the transliteration such as "daijin" would be transliterated (or transliteratable) into the user's script as well. I know that nl:wikt doesn't give a Hebrew transliteration of "大臣" anywhere, and that en:wikt has actually been deleting Cyrillic transliterations of Chinese (though those were added as entries, not translations).
Whatever my complaints about Gerard's UW, scripts are not one of them.
== [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.
I think that's meant to be a sample sentence using the word, not necessarily an idiom. But it should bear a translation into the user's language as well.
We haven't really addressed this issue at en:wiktionary. My first impression would be that a quotation to illustrate the use of a word in a foreign language should be in its original, _and_ should be accompanied by its English translation.
Idiom will be welcome in UW, it will be treated as a word with the wordtype "idiom". Mind you the wordtype is defined with the word. As such it is possible to add translations as required. I do agree that idiom needs to be in the same language as the word itself.
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.
So the problem of translations given to a language's out-of-date version of a meaning will still exist?
"Meaning on a global level" would need to be in some kind of abstraction. Without that you would need to give precedence to some language.
Please refer to what I wrote about relations at the top of my answer. When a meaning has been defined, it may have a list of words that are included because these words have the same meaning in the other language eg "you" can have many different words as a translation because of the way grammar works differently in different languages. When the translations of the words are seen as included in the meaning of the English word "you", you will have a list of words all translating to "you" but not being synonymous. From a translation point of view they DO translate to the English meaning of "you" even though they have a distinct meaning in the original language.
When meanings are added at this time, often the translations are not touched making it uncertain if these translations are correct. With UW translations are linked to meanings, these translations will not automagically transfer to a new meaning. One can assume that the orginal meaning stays within the boundaries of what was intended. If not, the translations have to be removed and reapplied by someone who understands both languages.
[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.
If a word really has different meanings, that's not a problem, and should be being done anyway.
How different is different? "Number" and "numeral" have closely related, but different meanings that are not recognized by everyone. The differential will not always be the same in all languages.
But this doesn't work if the word doesn't actually *have* multiple meanings to native speakers. English "you" isn't divided into formal and familiar, or masculine and feminine, as it is in some languages. I hope this isn't what you're talking about.
The 2nd person pronoun is full of problems. The English singular, "thou", is rarely used, so using that in translation would sound very strange to most hearers. In French politeness and social standing play a major role in the choice of singular and plural. Spanish takes politeness one step further by also using "usted", which takes a third person verb. New and old world versions of the language will treat these issues differently. You can't possibly sort this out through a multi-language translating dictionary.
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.
Yes, they all have different meanings. They have different pragmatics too. For example it may be that the usual translation in one language actually has a different literal meaning, and that the exact translation is a kind of technical term nobody would use, or may not exist at all. (A well-documented example is that of color terms.) But if, as I understand from what you say above, translation tables are not being shared across words with "synonymous" definitions, then my previous comment on this point doesn't apply.
It's the subtleties that make the difference. Albert Camus' novel "L'Étranger" is variously tianslated as "The Stranger" or "The Outsider". It takes more than crude dictionary knowledge to sort out the distinction. Before a UW project or any other kind of multilanguage translating dictionary can be an effective tool the material belonging to the separate component languages must first be functional reference tools for the native speakers of each language. English already has over 75,000 entries, but it still has a long way to go before it can be that kind of tool for English speakers. I can't imagine that the much smaller wiktionaries for other languages are any closer.
The current wiktionaries are with respect, similar to a paper based dictionary. It does have little to no functionality that allows it to make a difference in this digital world. When we start to publish content in .dict or RFC 2229 format, people use in effect multiple resources to get their dictionary content. That will be new functionality. It means that new functionality can be bootstrapped onto an incomplete resource. When the OmegaT people are to use UW as a glossary resource in their translationtool, it will be new functionality. Functionality that will enhance the UW content. When UW can become a resource for Open / Free projects, it will gain many words that from a lexicological point of view may be incomplete but that will make it usefull as a resource to some. This will be new functionality.
In effect, there is no reason that I can see to improve the current wiktionaries when the same information can be had in the UW. There are reasons to use UW in stead of individual wiktionaries because the usefullness and the synergy factor is so much better.
Thanks, GerardM
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