[antlr-interest] Natural language and ANTLR...

[Addi Jamshidi]

I agree with your statement of"

"Getting all possible interpretations of "I once shot
an elephant in my  pajamas" is pretty easy.  Figuring
out which one makes sense is another  story ;)"

However what my original question with being able to
use ANTLR as the basis of having a grammar for the
English language was, had to do with the following:

1) Currently we translate our tools/products into 16
other languages (besides English). For every string
that we use in our classes or GUI widgets, we
basically create a string/message in English and put
it in some type of resource file and ship it to our
translators to translate them for us. IN turn we get
the translated strings in newly created resource
files, and bundle them with our products/tools.

2) The problem is I want to automate most of this
process. That is to transform the function of our
translation centers from that of "implementers" to one
that is more in the capacity of "advisory" and
"reviewers". 
Basically what I want to do is:

1) Run the English strings and messages through
auomtated machine translation engines (there are quite
a few of them out there).

2) The resulted strings can then further be analyzed
before shipping them to our translation centers for
their new role of being "reviewers" as oppose to
actually translating them. And this is where I was
thinking of perhaps using ANTLR for better formulating
the translations.

You see, the strings that are being translated are not
complicated (i.e. they are not Sheakspearan type
literature but rather strings and messages such as
:"Please enter the name of your Database", or simple
1-2 word sentences such as "Connection Name",,
"Database name", or something like "Welcome to Our
Stored Procedure Wizard", etc.

The problem is the automated translation engines
translate something like "Welcome to our Stored
Procedure Wizard" to "Welcome to our Saved procedure
magician" !
Since we are dealing within a very limited context
putting these translated strings into more intelligent
context would require:

1) Proper usage of words (e.g. Wizard = "Assistant
Tool" as oppose to "magician").

2) Knowing how to formulate the new sentence after
figuring out what the proper wording should be. This
is where I was hoping perhaps ANTLR can come handy.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Regards,

Addi Jamshidi




--- Terence Parr <parrt at jguru.com> wrote:
> 
> On Monday, March 3, 2003, at 04:39  AM, Dvoryansky
> Leonid wrote:
> 
> > Hi All.
> >
> > I just want to know what can science do with
> natural languages for a 
> > current
> > moment?
> > Are there any institutes which making research in
> that direction?
> > And which class of grammars cover natural
> languages?
> > And are there many differences in various
> languages from the science
> > standpoint?
> >
> > It will be a big step to ai to recognize natural
> speaking.
> >
> > Terr, plz help if you can.
> 
> Xerox PARC and Fuji labs both have active groups in
> this area; I just 
> had lunch with one of the smart guys down there in
> Palo Alto.  Natural 
> languages are probably in the chomsky type 0
> category.  Chomsky I 
> *think* showed how at a certain level all languages
> follow a certain 
> over-grammar (my dumb term).
> 
> Getting all possible interpretations of "I once shot
> an elephant in my 
> pajamas" is pretty easy.  Figuring out which one
> makes sense is another 
> story ;)
> 
> Ter
> --
> Co-founder, http://www.jguru.com
> Creator, ANTLR Parser Generator:
> http://www.antlr.org
> Lecturer in Comp. Sci., University of San Francisco
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 


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