The author of this text has translated many pieces of news. Such content is usually unique and it is not possible to use TM to a satisfying degree: most of the sentences do not repeat. The use of TM is fairly limited. TM here functions as a reference, except in rare cases when background information is appended to a piece (two or three brief paragraphs that repeat occasionally).

TM Compensation, Fast Shortcuts

It seems that WFC if not so useful. After all, if the TM is of limited use, the CAT is helpless, just like a translator. Luckily, this is not true. The WFC has well organized glossaries, which are easy to use due to the shortcuts. That significantly compensates for the restricted usefulness of the translation memory. After putting the cursor in front of a source word (or selecting multiple words) and pressing CTRL + ALT + T once, and then repeating this in the translation segment, the entry window pops up and, after saving, the word/phrase is ready for use. When WFC recognises the term it highlights it, and then the translator can select it by pressing CTRL + ALT + LEFT/RIGHT ARROW, and place it into the target segment with CTRL + ALT + DOWN ARROW.

Overuse of the Glossary, What to Put in It

Here comes a very important question: what to put in the glossary to speed up the translation? Some translators stick to the meticulously selected words they look up in dictionaries, or they load glossaries provided by a translation agency. Of course, we can do this as well. The WFC allows four glossaries at the same time, so there is room for the glossaries acquired beforehand.

We are going to broaden the “range” of glossary and include not only unknown terms, but specifically – phrases and sentence parts/clauses. And here lies the combined power of the WFC shortcuts and glossaries. Have a look at some of the entries in our sample glossary (EN-SR):

company's representative – predstavnik kompanije
democratic institutions – demokratske institucije
of democratic institutions – demokratskih institucija
with democratic institutions – sa demokratskim institucijama
in Romania – u Rumuniji
in September – u septembru
in several – u nekoliko
Ministry of Infrastructure – Ministarstvo za infrastrukturu
on a political level – na političkom nivou
to do all that was required – uraditi sve što je potrebno
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – Internet korporacija za dodeljene brojeve i imena
European Investment Bank – Evropska investiciona banka
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – Evropska banka za rekonstrukciju i razvoj

As you can see, nothing particularly unknown is listed above. However, there are two interesting things about the examples. Firstly, it is easy to insert the glossary items in the translation by using shortcuts, so lengthy items are no more a problem. Secondly, by providing several examples of the same phrase, it is possible to cover most cases of a particular phrase. For example “democratic institutions” can be in the nominative case, but “of democratic institution” is in the genitive case. This use is now beyond the management of terminology and closer to the TM use. One might wonder what happens with synonyms. If WFC finds multiple entries for a glossary item, it will display all corresponding meanings from which you can choose by using a small popup window.

THE FINAL NOTE – SPEED

We can expand the meaning of the glossary, understood as a “termbase”, to the notion of “versatile text holder”. Thus, we can include not only unknown terms, but common ones as well. If “known” phrases are lengthy and in different cases in the target translation, this will speed up the translation. However, creating the glossary requires time. Although the inclusion of new items is very simple, it breaks the continuity in work – and could, in fact, prolong the finishing of the translation. From my experience adding items to such “extended glossaries” is best done sparingly during the translation, and in details after the work is finished.

This text was initially published on ProZ.com Translation Article Knowledgebase (and written for it).

A plot is created as usual, but the IPA labels are stored in a separate vector:

diph.names.ipa <- c('e\u026A', 'a\u026A', '\u0254\u026A')

The hex values of IPA symbols are available here.

A sample graph created with this R script looks like this:

A sample graph showing IPA symbols drawn by plot() command.

If you are working with R in ESS, there is a difference in IPA representation on Windows and Linux. In Windows the characters are shown in the hex notation, at least in my case. On Linux, on the other hand, the symbols are shown as IPA, so it is much easier to work:

IPA symbols within a data frame object in R (ESS/Linux)

The table above is sorted and ready to be inserted into a text editor. In case you are using Word or Writer, you can copy/paste the table with a quick workaround. You need to have installed Open Office (Libre Office). Open Calc application, select the first cell and paste the table from Emacs. In options that appear, select “Space” and “Merge delimiter” in “Separated by” and confirm. Next step is to copy the table from Calc and paste it where needed:

Related posts:

1. FONRYE English Dictionary: Phonetic and Syllable Search
2. Checking Praat’s TextGrids in Python
3. Formant synthesis application

In case you are a linguist/phonetician you might be using Praat, a small, but very powerful, programme for phonetic analysis. Chances are have a lot of speakers and recordings. You will probably segment signals in Praat, and save the segmentation in TextGrids.

Thanks to Margaret Mitchell and Steven Bird, who contributed the parser for Praat TextGrid to Natural Language Toolkit, automated analysis is now much easier.

TextGrid parser is a part of NLTK and it is located here.

I am grateful to the authors, because they saved me a lot of time during segmentation checks. All that was needed was a Python script that uses the above code to load TextGrid content, and then write a set of checks for each file/speaker.

Checking file  03-speaker-im.TextGrid
    Checking proper tier names...
    Checking if tiers contain 32 items...
    Checking if all tiers have valid text...
    Checking if the diphthongs have pairs...
    Checking if all words are present...
    Checking if the words and diphthongs match...
Mismatch: "ay_l" not allowed in "dice", at position 24.
It should say "ay_s".

Here, for example, my script warned me that I have a wrong label for a diphthong in the file number 3. To spot that “manually” it would require a lot of time and attention.

I hope this post might help other researchers, and here is the Python script I wrote for my phonetic research.

Related posts:

1. FONRYE English Dictionary: Phonetic and Syllable Search
2. Formant synthesis application

Download: FONRYE 0.3.3 (2.2 MB)

In this post: why phonetic dictionary search, what is FONRYE, download and search, settings and results, credits.

Why I needed a searchable phonetic dictionary

For several month I have been working on my M.A. in experimental phonetics. One of the prerequisites is an acceptable corpus. My work is about the English diphthongs. However, diphthongs have to be pronounced after voiced plosives and before voiced/unvoiced plosives, and the words containing diphthongs should preferably be monosyllabic.

Making a corpus is not an easy task and it involves a painstaking search for suitable material. I had no searchable phonetic dictionary of any sort (a version of Macmillan Advanced Dictionary refused to work). It was a pure luck, then, to come across a paper where the bibliography listed one interesting source:  University of Cambridge public FTP server. That is where I found BEEP and MH2 and decided to compile my own searchable dictionary, hopefully usable for the making the corpus.

What FONRYE is, and what it is not

FONRYE (named after fonetski rječnik in Serbian) is a very simple program (or script, if you like) written in Python 2.6. It is a specific piece of software I created for personal use: to search for diphthongs in a phonetic context. It does not have any fancy search rules or regular expression syntax. The plan was to use regexp, but it was very slow to run – I guess it can be improved if needed. So, please bear in mind that it was not planned for releasing: the code may contain strange comments, bad spelling etc.

Its settings are contained in the script itself, in 4 lines of code, which will be explained later. Here’s an example:

before = ('m', 'n', 'r', 'l' ),
after = sounds['voiceless'] + sounds['voiced'],
diphthongs = sounds['diphthongs'],
syllable = 0

The user enters desired search conditions, executes the program, which then saves the results in a folder, accompanied by a short info.

FONRYE phonetic dictonary search, code view

How to use FONRYE

1. On Windows/Mac: Download Python, but a version lower than 3.0. The version 2.6 is preferred. On Linux: You already have Python installed, but make sure you have an “old” version as well (again, prior to the version 3).
2. Download FONRYE files, and unpack them. Please make sure you do not delete ‘results’ folder or the program will not work. On Windows go to Start menu and find IDLE inside Python folder. On Linux: Use any plain text editor which supports code editing, such as gedit. Or, install Python IDLE from your OS repository. Edit file run.py, enter your settings and save the file. Finally, run the program (double click run.py or press F5 in IDLE).
3. The program will start the search, and after it finishes the results will be in results/fonyre_results_n, where n is the search counter.

Settings and results format

In the step 3 above you opened run.py file. Here is how to enter the “settings”. First, locate these lines:

before = (),
after = (),
diphthongs = ()
syllable = 0

Do not modify anything except content inside the brackets and syllable number (that is, unless you are familiar with programming). By the way, syllable = 0 means words with 1 syllable, syllable = 1 with 2 syllables etc. Enter your phonemes in the brackets. For example, the settings:

before = ('b', 'd'),
after = ('p', 't'),
diphthongs = ('ay',)
syllable = 0

…will search for all words containing diphthong ay (IPA: aɪ) if the diphthong is between b/d and p/t. After the search is done, go to ‘results/fonrye_search’ folder and locate search_info.txt (here is a vowel search info, a sample) – that is info about your search, including unique mark (ID) placed in all result files to keep track of the searches/results. The folder ‘files’ is where your searches are placed. For the provided sample search the program produced the following file/results:

# uniqueid-dzzic
BIGHT		b ay t
BITE		b ay t
BLIGHT		b l ay t
BRIGHT		b r ay t
BRIGHTS		b r ay t s
BY-PASS		b ay p aa s
DIGHT		d ay t

You can find computer phonetic code in phoncode.txt in ‘data’ directory or in the file beep-1.0-edited. Please enter only this plain phonetic notation. IPA is not applicable.

Credits

I could create and use this little project, and place it on the Net, thanks to two people who provided the core of the project: a phonetic dictionary and a hyphenation dictionary. The phonetic dictionary was compiled by Toby Robinson from Cambridge University Engineering Department;  Moby Hyphenation dictionary was created by Grady Ward. Both the projects were placed into the public domain in 1996. See Bibliography page for FTP addresses.

My credits are for some fast-writing not-so-good-looking slow Python code, which you are free to improve and share.

Feedback is very welcome!

Related posts:

1. WordWeb – English dictionary application worth using
2. The Number of Diphthongs in English Language
3. Top Five English Phonetic (Phonemic) Charts

The programme synthesises F1, F2, F3 and F4 formants from several sources (rectangle, triangle, sine, sampled and noise). It “demonstrates formant-based synthesis of vowels in real time, in the spirit of Gunnar Fant’s Orator Verbis Electris (OVE-1) synthesiser of 1953” (from the About window).

„Formants are defined by Fant  as ‘the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P(f)|’ of the voice. Formant is also used to mean an acoustic resonance,[2] and, in speech science and phonetics, a resonance of the human vocal tract. It is often measured as an amplitude peak in the frequency spectrum of the sound, using a spectrogram (in the figure) or a spectrum analyzer, though in vowels spoken with a high fundamental frequency, as in a female or child voice, the frequency of the resonance may lie between the widely-spread harmonics and hence no peak is visible. In acoustics, it refers to a peak in the sound envelope and/or to a resonance in sound sources, notably musical instruments, as well as that of sound chambers” — Wikipedia.

The window of the Formant Synthesis Demo

The download link is on the Formant Synthesis Demo site.

Related posts:

1. WordWeb – English dictionary application worth using

Stand-alone app

WordWeb is stand-alone application. You can download it from the official site, install and use without internet connection. It comes with WordNet database created by Princeton University. The database itself is very good, and you will rarely need any other explanations. However, if there is a need, upgrade is available for additional money.

Synonyms, antonyms, types – widening and narrowing meaning

WordWeb Pro is not only a dictionary, but thesaurus as well: very easy to use synonym, antonym finder. Here is the example for word “site”:

WordWeb tabs with different dictionary content

This screenshot illustrates many things. We can see that “site” is pronounced similarly as “cite” and “sight”. Tab type of lists words like “computer”, “position”, “parcel of land”, while tab types contains, amongst others, words “active site”, “camp”, “ground zero”. The first tab lists less specific words, second most specific words, so you can narrow or widen your search. Of course, there is a list of synonyms, in this case “internet site”, “place”, “website” and so on.

IPA transcription not available in default dictionary

There is one thing I feel represents major drawback: there is no IPA transcription. WordWeb with its default database (Princeton) displays nonstandard phonetic transcription (so “site” is /sIt/). I have not used Oxford or Chambers English Dictionary with WordWeb, which are also available as additional purchases, so I don’t know which transcription is used there. However, on brighter side: most of the headwords have pre-recorded pronunciation, in British and American English,  available as separate (free) download.

Language treasure in tabs

In other searches, WordWeb will display different tabs, depending on the search:

Synonyms Words which mean the same in some context
e.g. close is a synonym of shut.
Antonyms Words meaning the opposite in some context
e.g. big is an antonym of little
See Also Mostly related word forms and compounds
e.g. cut gives see also cut off, cutter, etc.
Type of Shows less specific words.
e.g. a comedy is a type of play
Types Shows more specific words.
e.g. flower has daisy as one of its types
Parts Shows words for part of an object
e.g. tree is one of the parts of a forest
Part of Shows words for a collection or the whole
e.g. bumper is a part of a car
Similar Words with meanings that are close
e.g. big is similar to huge

(Taken from WordWeb help file.)

We used WordWeb’s built-in anagram option to create a puzzle: “New meshing ‘twixt cowl”. Can you solve it? Hint: see the address bar!

Windows integration, options

The program integrates nicely with Windows. Just highlight a word and press shortcut keys to pop up the definitions. If the explanation is not enough, you can click on Wikipedia tab, which will show proper page on world’s most used reference site. It is also possible to use full text search, solve anagrams, add own definitions and create word lists (great for learning). You can use it with Microsoft Word and other processors.

Optional dictionaries

If default dictionary does not suite your needs, you can buy additional ones:

Oxford Dictionary of English
Chambers Dictionary of the English Language
Chambers Thesaurus
New Oxford American Dictionary
Australian Oxford English Dictionary
Canadian Oxford English Dictionary

It really is great dictionary, thesaurus – and more

If you are looking for great dictionary / synonym / antonym tool – you should try WordWeb Pro. Indeed, there are many free sites out there, and word definitions are easy to find, but you have to have internet connection and be patient with all those ads. WordWeb Pro works offline, with powerful dictionary tool just a shortcut away.

Free version is available here.

Related posts:

1. MSDict Pocket Oxford Italian Dictionary (PC) – reviewed
2. Top Five English Phonetic (Phonemic) Charts
3. Beolingus – Great Online German Dictionary

Internet is hefty media and we have witnessed its power unleashed in vast world of social sites, visited by millions of users daily. They are bases on new concept called Web 2.0 and introduce great amount of pictures, sounds, videos, comments and communication. Some of the concepts are used in Bosuu.com and we are here to give you an overview of how this service can help you learn new language.

Busuu.com is created as an online meeting place around interactive courses, lessons and exercises where you can talk and collaborate with natives speakers.

Let there be Tree

When you register you will have your own Learning Garden that list all languages you learn as trees which grow gradually as you progress through the courses. It is a great visual tool that motivates younger learners but those mature as well. You will be rewarded with small tokens that symbolize your progress. It is also possible to take a look of other peoples’ threes and see their progress.

Languages on Busuu Tree – French, Italian, German

Four languages are available at this moment: French, Italian, German and English and the staff announced plans for adding more, even the elusive Busuu language the site is named after.

For each language there are several ways to go through the lessons. You can do them one by one, by choosing the level of difficulty or by selecting the grammar sections or topics that interests you.

Busuu main page with Language Tree

New words are presented with an image which helps in acquiring, especially for visual types of learners. Of course, you can hear the word spoken by native speaker, and if you are a premium user, you can hear it in the context (an utterance). This will greatly help you master your pronunciation and get sentence rhythm.

Premium users can download lessons in PDF, print it and work offline – this is not available for common users.

It would be more interesting and of more benefit to have different lessons for each language: here the content is the same, only in different language. This negatively affects motivation in some users, wile others will appreciate familiar context. However, acquiring foreign language is also learning about culture and differences, and users all over the world would appreciate diversity in this globalized society. It would be very refreshing to learn about Maria from Sicily or Amelie and Jacques from Paris…

Test and mistakes

After the vocabulary training and short texts you can work on tests and see how well you are doing. The things that you find more difficult will be saved, so you can review later.

The name of the site comes from the Busuu language of Cameroon, which according to an ethnological study from the 80ies is only spoken by 8 people.

Multiple-choice comprehension test, one of many test teypes on Busuu

Hidden value and native speakers

One of the best things about Busuu is the interaction between native speakers and learners of foreign language. This “linguistic productivity” and communication is essential for successful acquisition of a new language.

In some lessons learners have to write on a topic in the language they are learning. This is not daunting as it seems because useful phrases are available and “students” must be creative and work on their own. Learners’ written work is then available for native speakers to edit and show mistakes. This great interaction can further be enhanced by voice chat and webcams – chat windows even contain useful phrases for conversation.

We really hope that this interactive “native speakers – learners” system will further be improved because of all its potential.

Go for it!

Would we suggest Busuu.com? Definitely. Go and meet people, share views and talk – in foreign language. Gauge your progress in Busuu Garden, and let friendly commnity of native speakers help you in your learning.

Busuu.com is a free online community for learning languages. Users have access to audio-visual learning material covering several topics. Additionally, language skills can be directly improved together with native speakers from around the world. Users connect via an integrated video-chat with other users of the community while at home. Each user is not only “student” of a foreign language but also a “teacher” of his own mother tongue. The start-up was founded in Madrid at the beginning of 2008. The company has been nominated Official Project of the UNESCO during the International Year of Languages. - from Busuu.com.

Related posts:

1. Babbel.com – language learning platform

• Invoice or Overdue Notice
• Dispatch Note and Acknowledgment Receipt
• Order Information
• Offer, and
• Enquiry

After the click on the template you will see common parts of the business letter (salutation, the first paragraph, subject etc.), with several options, followed by spaces for information to personalize your letter.

Creating custom business letter intro by using the template

Created letters can be exported in textual and rich-text format (RTF). Here is an example of completed letter:

Business Letter - Offer (Auto-generated by a template)

Letters auto-generated from templates are interesting and useful mostly as an illustration of the form. However, it is better to learn how to write them and improve your correspondence, which is, after all, business-like and professional.

Update: KvocTrain is no longer maintained. Initially, it was part of KDE Education Software, but it was later replaced by Parley or KWordWiz.

The installation of KVocTrain on Ubutu Linux was very simple: you will find the program in Add/Remove Software, under Education section. After the installation, run the program from Applications > Education. A vocabulary trainer is not useful without a dictionary, and luckily, the program allows download of some pretty useful dictionaries.

KVocTrain supports many dictionary types

In the above example, words for the SAT preparation are installed. This dictionary contains over 5000 entries the program uses to test your knowledge. However, before the testing begins, you must set the number of entries per lesson (Vocabulary > Assign Lessons). There is one more required option which tells the program how many lessons to display in a single session. Go to Settings > Configure KVocTrain > Threshold > Lesson settings.

KVocTrain allows different types of “flash-cards”: multiple choice, synonyms, antonyms, entering definitions, part of speech, etc. However, this is available if it is supported by a dictionary you have downloaded (or created yourself). In our example, I have selected Learning > Word > Create multiple choice > From definition:

Multiple choice questions

Or, you can make questions that require typing in of the answer:

KVocTrain - Random Query

Aside from use as a language learning application, KVocTrain can be used to devise non-language  tests, such as for music or anatomy (there are tests ready for download in the program). With high-quality dictionaries easily available in the program’s options this software is a great tool to improve your language.

Get KVocTrain from Add/Remove Dialogue in your Linux distribution, or visit KVocTrain Homepage.

Useful links:

• KVocTrain Homepage on Sourceforge.net
• KVocTrain on The KDE Education Project

Related posts:

1. MSDict Pocket Oxford Italian Dictionary (PC) – reviewed

Grammar: Meanings and translation

If you have heard about William Whitaker’s free Latin dictionary called WORDS, you probably know that his work is freely available for other applications. Thanks to this, pyLatinam Automatic Grammar after derivation now shows meanings of the word. Here is an example of declined noun with highlighted meanings:

This was done by first parsing main WORDS file and making it available for pyLatinam code. As the project improves, new parts of speech will be added; next to be implemented are pronouns and adjectives.

Grammar: The code

There are some significant changes in the code, but little of that is visible on Interactive Pages. pyLatinam has a new class that makes work with dictionaries (internal ones) easier. As mentioned before, new code displays the meanings. In the terms of grammatical validity, the program will now recognize words like puer, pueri, m and gener, generi, m as those that keep sound e during declension (so-called fleeting e issues).

Visual stuff

Not so important for functionality of the program as much as it makes a visit to the site more pleasant: I have changed the default, almost generic design in, hopefully, something classical-looking.

FAQ Page

There is also a new page, FAQ, available in two languages:

English: pyLatinam Frequently Asked Questions
Serbian, Latin: pyLatinam česta pitanja (srpski, latinica)
Serbian, Cyrillic: pyLatinam честа питања (српски, ћирилица)

pyLatinam is online grammar software. It is free and open software, still in its early stages.

Your comments and suggestions are more than welcome!

See more articles about Automated Latin Grammar.

Related posts:

1. It’s about enthusiasm, language and programming – pyLatinam