MOLTO Multilingual Phrasebook
Aarne Ranta


History
- Version 0.1, 26 March 2010. Eng, Fin, Fre, Ron; dedicated minibar UI.
- Version 0.2, 28 March. Swe, Ita; cat Action; small phrases.



=Purpose=

This phrasebook is a programme for translating touristic phrases 
between 15 European languages:
- Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English,
  Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian,
  Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish


It is implemented by using the GF programming language 
([Grammatical Framework http://grammaticalframework.org]).
It is the first demo for the MOLTO project 
([Multilingual On-Line Translation http://www.molto-project.eu]).

The phrasebook has the following requirements:
- high quality: reliable translations
- translation from any language to any other ones
- runnable in web browsers
- runnable on mobile phones (also off-line: forthcoming for Android phones)
- easily extensible by new words (forthcoming: semi-automatic extensions by users)


The phrasebook is available as open-source software, licensed under GNU LGPL. 
The source code resides in 
[``code.haskell.org/gf/examples/phrasebook/`` http://code.haskell.org/gf/examples/phrasebook/]


Current status (28 March 2010):
- available in English, Finnish, French, Italian, Romanian, Swedish
- very small coverage
- works on web browsers calling a server
- web service not yet released, but preliminarily available 
  [here http://tournesol.cs.chalmers.se/~aarne/phrasebook/phrasebook.html]



=Points illustrated=

The use of resource grammars and functors.

Compile-time transfer: especially, in Action in Words.

Quasi-incremental translation: many basic types are also used as phrases.

Disambiguation, esp. by the parameters in Roles.


=Files=

abstract Sentences: general syntactic structures implementable by functor
- concrete by functor SencencesI

abstract Words: words and predicates, typically language-dependent
- concrete separate

abstract Greetings: idiomatic phrases, strings with role dependence
- concrete separate

abstract Phrasebook: put everything everything together
- concrete separate

resource Roles: param Politeness, Gender

interface DiffPhrasebook: the (so far small) interface for Sentences



=To Do=

Text-based translation interface.

Access to disambiguation grammars in the interface.

The remaining 10 languages

Extract/construct lexica for
- food stuff
- languages
- places