Translating properly French ‘de’ is much complicated, since there are many different grammatical cases. To cite but a few of them: ‘de’ as a noun complement: ‘la fille de Jean, le chapeau de la mariée’ (Jean’s daughter, the bride’s hat) = a figliola di Ghjuvanni, u cappeddu di a spusata: ‘de’ = di ‘de’ from […]
Now the big question is this: how hard is it to transform a single pair MT (rule-based) system into a multiple pairs ecosystem? To put it in its simplest form: how hard is it to turn a MT system related to a given pair A-B into an ecosystem with, say, 26 languages A, B, …, […]
The problem of dictionary coherence is notably related to synonym transitivity: are synonyms transitive one with another? Usually, the response is negative. But isn’t this established wisdow questionable? Don’t we need to distinguish between: quasi-synonyms which are untransitive true synonyms, which are transitive: for example, the verb ‘finir’ in French (to end) translates indifferently into […]
Language pair reversal: Rule-based translation is currently disregarded, in particular for the reason that it needs a lot of work and expertise. But is that reason well-grounded? Now focussing on a given language pair, we can formulate this question more accurately as follows: from a given pair language1/language2 translator, how much work is necessary to […]