learning from dicologos

Dicologos is the dictionary of Logos. It is a great resource and there are many things to learn from it in order to make Ultimate Wiktionary a success. Dicologos has more than 7 million words, there are words in many languages and, the content is growing all the time and its main problem is that it is not well known and that its focus is on translators.

When translators use a dictionary, they typically use it to find confirmation for the translation of a word. All the rest is not really relevant to them. An ordinary user of a dictionary uses it as much as anything to find a definition of a word. As the bulk of the potential public for Dicologos is NOT a translator, the lack of definitions is a big problem when you want to establish public awareness of Dicologos a Free resource. For Logos it is important that Dicologos is seen as an important resource because it demonstrates that Logos contributes to society by providing to the culture of our society.

When you have worked on this resource like I have, you will appreciate that it is much more responsive than the Wiktionary servers but you miss the cooperation, the sense of community. There are no talk pages like in all the Mediawiki Wikis. There are no mailing lists. There is no sense of community.

When Dicologos and the wiktionaries are to work together, a common ground must be found where the content and the communities can find each other. Technically, the content of the Wiktionaries cannot be converted to the Dicologos database because many types of information cannot find a place in the database design of Dicologos. In the same way it is not possible to convert the Dicologos data to the Wiktionaries because you have to do it so many times and, there is so much overlap in the data.

When Logos decides that they are going to work together in a lexicological resource, they will find that in Ultimate Wiktionary they can include all their content. They will have all the community features that are implicitly available in the Mediawiki software. If they want to take the next step, they can work together in a resource that will be hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. The specific needs of Logos can be adressed in what will be the Ultimate Wiktionary. These needs will be addressed in a non-discriminatory way.

Thanks,
GerardM

A thesaurus of biological terminology

When people write about a subject they often use acronyms. Using these as a shorthand makes sense because the alternative is using LONG phrases time and time again. Depending on the subject, different often mutually exclusive acronyms are used. As many of the acronyms are often used together, it helps when you can identify these patterns.

The result is that documents can be identified to be about a particular subject and as a result it enhances the time spend; you will read about things that are of interest.

An other application is when words are used together in a given setting that they can be identified to be about a given subject matter. For translators it means that it helps to choose the correct meaning for a word. When this is done automagically, a correct translation glossary can be loaded.

Thanks,
Gerard

I work at Logos to make the Ultimate Wiktionary happen

Ultimate Wiktionary is this thing that I want to happen badly. I will do everything to make it happen. I will even go to Italy to do so.

I did go to Modena (Italy) to make it happen. Modena is where the Logos Group is based. They have been working for 20 years on an online database. This resource is huge; this resource is important. It has between 7 and 10 miljon lemmas. It has an active community of translators working on the content and it is my pleasure to help make this resource even better.

One of the things Logos wants to do is to cooperate with the Wiktionary communities and as Ultimate Wiktionary is also to be implemented in an Mediawiki environment, what does make more sense then to join the resources of two vibrant communities ?

Thanks,
GerardM

Exciting times

On Wikimania Jimbo Wales said that lexicological content ought to be free. When this happens all kind of things start to become possible. Logos is about to make a lot of their content available under the GFDL. Their content has long been freely available, now they are going to license it.

The great thing is that is allows for among other things, the use of this content for teaching languages. Consider, when you create a language excercise you need words to select. When these words are available in an electronic resource, you can make selections including particular vocabulary related to specific subject matter.

For the provider and the user of the Free content / Free education, it is a win-win situation. Both need ample data and with more eyes looking at content and structure, the data can only improve in quantity and quality.

The good news is all of this is happening.

Thanks,
GerardM

Homophones

On the English Wiktionary they have this wonderfull resource called "Entry layout explained". It explains what is needed for the different content that is available on there. I just discovered it because it was mentioned on IRC.

For me it is a treasure trove. Because all the content described needs its place in the Ultimate Wiktionary. I have to think through how to add homophones. I have to think about how to have them as content. At this stage I do not need to concern myself with where it will end up in the actual screens. I have to have it in the database.

Homophones led to the most drastic change in a long time. I divorced Relations from Meanings. Now RelationType is connected to the Table table. This in effect allows me to use the Relation table in combination with Words as well. This gives me right and rite as homophones

Eponyms

The wikimedia foundation had a wonderfull offer of getting a database with eponyms. This is great and obviously once we have them, we want to include them in Ultimate Wiktionary as well.

Eponyms are however a funny thing; they are definetly related to words and not to their meaning. Actually this should be quite obvious because in German you have "Röntgenstrahlen" while in English it is called "x-ray". One is an eponym, while the other is not and they do share the same meaning.

Thinking about eponyms and how to include them in the database design let me see the light that I was really wrong about how I had etymologies in the data design. Like eponymys etymologies are word related and not meaning related; they too are language specific.

The funny bit is that many people have looked at it and nobody noticed. I think it is like with so many things, the best designs do not survive reality unscathed. :)

Thanks,
GerardM

Open Office is LGPL

Open Office is nowadays LGPL. The importance is that this is a major shift for Sun Microsystems because Open Office is seen by many as the major free Office Suite. Making OO LGPL makes it much easier to share code.

Sun has its own Computer Aided Translation (CAT) tool. These open language tools are written in Java. The open language tools are licensed under the CDDL license. It would be great if they could share their code with the OmegaT CAT tool. OmegaT is also written in Java.

My point is that there is this big concentration of effort and power in the commercial CAT tool business to the extend that there is a genuine monopoly. It does not make sense to have all the Open/Free CAT tools work seperately. To stimulte cooperation We hope to make a success out of the reference tool for a translation glossary. The best thing that could happen if some serious attention is given to more cooperation.

Thanks,
GerardM

Me, CAT tools en Microsoft

When you are not a translator and when you have no dealings with the translation business, you would not expect that anything that I can do could threaten business interests of Microsoft. I was therefore very suprised when I was informed that my wish for a reference implementation of a translation glossary and my wish to integrate such a functionality in open source CAT tools like OmegaT do just that.

I am actively looking for money to enhance OmegaT. Not because I am likely ever to use it, but because I want quality translations in Ultimate Wiktionary. This reference implementation will do exactly that. In order to make OmegaT less user-feindly, there several little things that can be done. Sabine, defined some quirks that are a barrier for newbies. She also identified that "Trados" compatibility would be really important to introduce many translators to OmegaT.

A friend of mine is working on three annoying things. He is a professional programmer. He will inform us how much time it costs and how much it would cost if 100 translators payed for this. The point that I want to drive home is, that you can either pay for a license or you pay for functionality. When you pay for functionality, it will prove to be much cheaper.

I have my reasons why I want OmegaT to be a success, Microsoft happens to be the monopolist in the translation/localisation business. It is a genuine suprise but when you think about it, it should not be.

Thanks,
GerardM

Working on the Logos website

You may apreciate that I have been spending time to learn how the Logos interface works. As the data has been worked on only by professional translators I am honoured that I am allowed to be an editor for the two languages I know best. With the content that I have available to me in Wikionary many translations in many languages are available to me. I have been adding words and translations like "gebarentaal" and the most recent one I worked on was "vakman". Now vakman is a tricky word; it is very imprecise in the translation and it has five different plurals. Now I have been looking how to deal with that in the Logos website but also to understand how it can be done in the Ultimate Wiktionary.

The differences between the current Wiktionary and Logos are profound. In Wiktionary anyone, even anonymous users can edit almost everything. In Logos an anonymous user can add words that are checked. When you are a professional, you edit translations in the languages that you know best. The thing that I missed were the talk pages; a place where you can discuss an individual word. I missed the IRC channel where I can discuss issues about words or meanings.

I understand the differences, they make sense because it shows where you are coming from. Logos provides very much a tool for translators by translators . Wiktionary is very much a tool for people who care about words/lexicology and share this in their mailinglist, IRC-channel and talk pages.

What kind of a community would result when these two communities were to merge? What kind of content? It would be an intersting experiment.

Thanks,
GerardM

Sign languages

Since Wikimania one of the things I am hopefull of is the inclusion of sign languages and oral languages in the Ultimate Wiktionary. Thinking of sign languages for me is really difficult; I do not sign I am not deaf and I do not know anyone who is. Wolfgang gave me an impression of what it is to be deaf; to me it is clear that the only thing I want to do is to create this resource that is there for them as well. It has to be their resource. It has to be their dictionary, they have to create the movies, categorise the content so that it can be found.

Consider what is going to happen when we can Free all the recordings of sign languages that exist in many universities and combine them with the content that we hope / expect to have, it will be a lexicological resource that will be awesome. Because of its scope it will get a relevance of its own and that is why it so great that an organisation like the Wikimedia Foundation will host it; it is not party in any of the rivalries between organisations or institutions it is just there to provide information to all the people of this world in their own language.

Thanks,
GerardM

Priorities

Wikimania was an event. From my perspective it was great. We are going to have this weird and wonderfull thing that is going under the project name of "Ultimate Wiktionary" and given that we hope to merge our activities with the Logos project we may start with a cool 7 miljon and a bit of lemma's. We then still have to work out many details like the migration of the wiktionaries, the creation of a new community that is not logos or wiktionary but logos.wiktionary.

Wikimania was also important because it paved the way of including sign languages into the project. Wolfgang Georgsdorf gave a great presentation and together with Ascander we changed the data design to include sign languages as well. I learned that there are ISO-639 codes for sign languages as well :) .

When I came back I have worked hard to do many things that can be considered the fallout of the conference, I still have not finished to do all the things that I want to do. The nds thing did not go away and it does cost me my time. There are all kinds of things that I want to have done and I work on them. It is about priorities. Informing about what is going on is a priority, I did some work on the nl.wikimedia server. And now I finally have written here as well.

Working on my presentations

Wikimania is only a few days off. There will be many exiting speakers. And I hope to be one. Not that I will not speak. I am getting nervous. I did my homework, I did write my presentation and there are so many things I would like to include but can't.

I can't because things have to develop some more. Because Ultimate Wiktionary is still some way off. Because people are still thinking old Wiktionary and I would only confuse most people even more.

Really, when we get UW life and functional it will be great. The filenames that I used have names like Spelling, Word and Meaning. The problem is that people think of them as a spelling a word or a meaning. Somtimes I think I should have named them Kwik, Kwek and Kwak. (you may also know them as Huey, Dewey, and Louie. It would make it more abstract but if it would help ??

Translating proverbs

When you put proverbs in a dictionary, you add all the usual things. You describe the meaning, you add an etymology and you translate the proverb. However how do you translate proverbs, do you translate them literally or do you want to give a proverb with a same meaning.

The proverb "de beste stuurlui staan aan wal" has a similar meaning as the English "backseat drivers". The Dutch version is nautical and the second one obviously not. So it is hardly a literal translation but it is a functional translation. In general terms the meaning can be described and as such it would function however, I can apreciate that there will be a certain drift when proverbs from many languages are put forward.

The problem for me is to consider how to deal with this in the Ultimate Wiktionary.. Well, at this moment we do not have it yet so it is not a problem .. :)

Thanks,
GerardM

Wikimania

In a few days wikimania the first world conference of the Wikimedia Foundation will open in Frankfurt. It will be a great time for the people that are able to come. There will be some things that will be broadcasted over the Internet.. The agenda is absolutely smashing. I will be speaking as well and I will speak in "die grosse Saal". It will be the final presentation in a series of four;

*Wikidata will be about the technology that will be behind Ultimate Wiktionary and many other projects.
*Wikisign will be about creating a lexicological resource for the deaf.
*Logos will bring us what their experience is hosting lexicological content
*Ultimate Wiktionary will be about what we hope achieve in the next generation of Wiktionary

As I have been talking so much about what I hope to achieve, I may not bring you anything new. However, there is so much to it..

Thanks,
GerardM

Feedback

I am starting to get feedback on my ERD. As was to be expected, what is clear to me is not necessarily clear to others. The great thing are the suggestions that come with the feedback, things like call it "Script" in stead of "Characterset" and there is an ISO code for it. Another improvement was to include a field to say that a specific relation (eg idiom or proverb) are language dependent.

Some of these things are so basic that you tend to forget to include it by making it explicit. All in all it proves important, publishing and publishing again does work.

Sound and sign

I am progressing with the datadesign for Ultimate Wiktionary. The current challenge I am facing is to deal with both oral languages and sign languages.

The easiest for sign languages was the realisation that a movie is the "Pronunciation" of a signed word. This made me change the fieldname from "Soundfile" to "Mediafile". More complicated is the fact that there are some four written signlanguages. These I would really want in the Ultimate Wiktionary. The question is, do they have like Chinese does their own UTF-8 characters. When they do, I do not have to do anything. It would just work as designed.

I have realised that languages like Arabic and Chinese are formal written languages. There are many people who have a spoken language that is grammatically and syntactically (does this word exist?) different from the formal words. So when I record pronunciations, how do I deal with those. How do I register those lanuages? How do I indicate that these languages use Chinese / Arabic for their written language..

My working theory for the moment is that there may be transcriptions for those languages. Certainly when they have been noted by someone who has some authority, these can be used to link the essentially oral words with something that has characters. These characters are needed at this moment to make it possible to enter them in the database. Now the question is, how to relate them to the written language ... At this time it is just a matter of having the written word as a translation.. in effect this is correct.

Thanks,
GerardM

Working on a table design

I am working on the table design for the Ultimate Wiktionary. I have posted the current version of my ERD and true to the tenets of Open Source I am working on it and will post often, people can deduce what I am thinking. The funny thing is that since the last time I created a more or less working model for an UW, I have learned so much. The resulting datadesign is significantly different. I have come to the realisation that what I create is very much the result of this proces of assimilation of a lots of loose ends in the current Wiktionaries.

One of the things that is funny is that when you design a database design you not only have to think of the data itself, you also have to think about how it is to be used. The problem for me is that the database and the development are pretty much divorced. I know databases pretty well but I do not know the restrictions of MySQL in combination with what Wikidata will bring us.

I find it really thrilling that we are at the stage where there is an imminent need for the datadesign for Ultimate Wiktionary..

Thanks,
GerardM

talking tables / files

We are arriving at the point where we have to talk file design. What tables do we need what fields will they have and how will this relate to the functionality of what we have.

The three most important tables will be "Language" "Word" "Meaning". They are top down related. The most difficult to understand will be "Meaning" because the meaning itself will be in a seperate table "Meaning-text". This is because the text of meaning is to be had in every language, and it is the abstraction of the meaning that is in "Meaning".

This "Meaning" will relate to synonymes and translations (a synonym is equivalent to a translation in the same language). This will give people an instant problem many words are not the exact translation of another, so how will we deal with this.

When a word is translated, the word picked in the translation is the one that fits best in the meaning of the original word. This meaning is therefore one that is of importance to this word as well. This meaning can be endemic to the language of the word, this makes it a natural fit or the meaning can be external to the language of the word. When the meaning is external to the language, this meaning is only relevant when translating the word.

This sound problematic. The word girl, meisje, Mädchen are good translations. In the Neopolitan language there are words that are specific to girls of a certain age. The meaning of these word is included in the meaning of the word girl. They need to be shown when you are interested in the Neopolitan language. However, when you are not interested, these meanings that are external to words of the English language, do not have to be shown.

I have been told that there are some four words that can be included in the word girl. These meanings do relate to each other and as such it makes sense to use thesaurus like structures to describe these relations. As these relations describe the meanings, these relations are relevant when you are interested in the Neopolitan language. They do help a translator choose the best fit and also alternatives when one word is used too often.

Thanks,
GerardM

Supporting a "bot"

The Wiktionary projects are very gratefull to the programmers of the pywikipedia bot. Particularly Andre Engels has been important in supporting this bot for the Wiktionary projects. He has programmed new functionalities that helped us work together more than what we would have done without it.

As can be deduced by its name, most people use the pywikipedia bot for Wikipedia projects. Many of the innovations have been programmed with Wikipedia in mind. The latest innovation allows you to be logged in several projecs at the same time. The interwiki bot makes use of this facility and when it finds that one project needs to be updated, it will do so. This enhances the quality of the bot dramatically.

Supporting a non-programmer like myself is a pain. It is therefore important that tools like tortoise work well. It means that a common baseline can be created. This in turn facilitate the analasys of error conditions. Today we finally got it to work. We had to remove the application and start it all over again.. This time it did download the pywikipediabot software from Sourceforge..

Really, Open Source rocks when there are friendly people like Andre ..

Thanks,
GerardM

IATE and Free content

IATE or Inter-Agency Terminology Exchange is a project that is to create a glossary to be used for the European Union. It has live data and its content was appreciated by many translators until recently. Until recently, there was a guest profile with a guest password that was used by many. Because the IATE database is "not ready for the general public as it may not cope with the demand that might be put upon it", this access to the public is removed.

To gain access, you have to translate for the EU and you have to sign a contract that you use it only for EU use. There is however one bright spot; its copyright. The IATE copyright says clearly that you can have this data and use it as long as you attribute it to the institution that manages this information.

It is therefore a lucky coincidence that we want to make Ultimate Wiktionary relevant. It is as fortunate that we already plan on cooperating with the EU by publishing its GEMET content. When we have proven that we can host lexicological data, we can ask the EU if we can host this data. It is relevant data it is important data so much so that the EU expects that its modern systems will crash under the strain of all these people who want it.

With the Wikimedia servers, we are used to provide as good a service as we can. We do not promiss 0.9999 uptime, we do the best that we can. And, if this data can be had for the lexicological information that it is, we are quite happy to host it. We are quite happy to cooperate with the EU to make this information available and more relevant then it is at the moment, being a "secret".

Thanks,
GerardM