neal@druny.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett) (03/03/85)
The European Economic Community is sponsoring the Dutch company BSO
(in Utrecht) to study semi-automatic translation between European
languages using an Intermediate Language (IL) based on Esperanto,
First, a non-linguist would enter the original text, while
the system (a set of 5 68000's) translated it into the IL,
and asked questions (in the source language) to resolve ambiguities.
The end user would then use a workstation equipped with a single
68000 to call up the database of IL text and translate (fully
automatically) selected material into the desired target language.
They are writing the system in PROLOG, using a Vax running UNIX
as the development system. (Anyone know how to get to this vax?)
A feasibility study was published in October of '83 by A. Witkam
entitled "DLT: Distributed Language Translation -- a Multilingual
facility for videotex information networks." You can get it from
ELNA. It is mostly linguistic in nature (but very readable),
but also describes the hardware and software in some detail.
There is a good bibliography.
I have heard that the most complete of all Esperanto dictionaries, the
Plena Ilustrita Vortaro, has been put on a floppy disk. I assume
this does not include the definitions, but who knows? I don't
know where to get it yet.
I have several things on-line:
An introduction to Esperanto
All the rules of grammar (all 16 of them :-))
The first lesson of the Free Postal Course in Esperanto
A Franz Lisp program which will do a simple word for word
transliteration of Esperanto into English (it's only about a 150
line program, so if you have a different version of lisp, or
no lisp at all, it shouldn't be too hard to patch something
together.)
A 2600 word dictionary
A list of the 500 most common roots
A copy of an Eliza-like Doctor program in Franz Lisp which uses
Esperanto
A cute fable
4 lessons out of Butler's "Esperanto for Beginners"
Instructions on some WordStar macros to facilitate putting
circumflexes and breves over letters.
Bruce A. Sherwood has written lots of very high quality articles relating
to Esperanto, computers, and teaching. He and his wife Judith
developed a wealth of Computer-Aided-Instruction materials
when they were affiliated with the PLATO project at the University
of Illinois (He's now at CMU: bs1b@cmccte; Judy is js6r@cmcctf). Among
them was a good-quality speech synthesis capability using a votrax.
Here are some references:
"New Technology Provides Computer Voices for Education",
B. Sherwood, Speech Technology, Fall 1981.
"Fast Text-to-Speech Algorithms for Esperanto, Spanish, Italian,
Russian, and English," Intl Journal of Man-Machine Studies,
B. Sherwood, 10 (1978).
"Speech Synthesis applied to Language Teaching", Studies in Language
Learning, B. Sherwood, 3 (1981).
"Computer Processing of Esperanto Text", B. Sherwood, Studies in
Language Learning, 3 (1981).
"Computer Voices and Ears Furnish Novel Teaching Options", J. Sherwood
and B. Sherwood, Speech Technology, Sept/Oct 1982.
Jim Deer of Portland (503 643-2252) has developed the "E1" drill program
for practicing Esperanto on an IBM PC or other Basic machine.
He is also interested in developing an Eliza-based program for
giving advice to beginning Esperantists ("Project LOLO").
John Wells (in England) has also developed a computer drill program.
Proposed projects:
Amri Wandel (in Maryland, umcp-cs!cvl!amri, who will also teach at the
UC San Francisco Esperanto courses this summer) is the director
of the Esperanto section of UNISPACE. This project aims to
create a microcomputer education system which can instruct
the youth of the world (especially in third-world countries)
about computer science, economics, international relations, etc.
The instruction will occur in the form of a simulation of
space navigation, international relations, the world economy, etc.
Esperanto will be the only language which the players can use
to communicate among themselves. This project is based in Vienna,
and is sponsored by the United Nations (this year is the
"International Year of Youth").
I would like to work on an Esperanto adaptation of the Writer's Workbench
software (English language advice, developed by Bell Labs).
Yearly Conference: Interkomputilo (seems to usually be in Hungary in December)
Publications:
Komputilteknika Vortaro is a technical dictionary which I have
not yet been able to get. (Hungarian, German, Russian, English,
and Esperanto.)
Internacia Komputado is published in Hungary every 3 months
There are several volumes of collected articles from previous
years of IK and the Interkomputilo conference. Among them:
Mikrokomputiloj, Periferioj kaj Aplikoj,
Tekstoprilaboro (text processing),
Instruado de matematiko kaj komputotekniko.
There are also primers on Pascal and Algol 60, and lots of other stuff.
Subscribers to CompuServe can discuss Esperanto in the "Good Earth" Special
Interest Group ("GO HOM-145"). Go to your local Radio Shack to sign
up for CompuServe (~$20 to sign up, $6/hour afterwards).
As I understand it, the Central Office of the Universal Esperanto Association
in Rotterdam has a UNIX system: anyone know if it is on the net?
-Neal McBurnett, ihnp4!druny!neal, (303) 538-4852
Boulder CO, 494-6495