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gf-core/src/ui/android/assets/help_content.html
2017-04-19 17:26:51 +00:00

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</p>
<b>GF Offline Translator</b>:
text and speech translation for 16 languages with
quality control. Version 19 April 2017 (beta).
</p>
<p>
<b>Speech input</b>: Tap microphone icon and talk while it is red.
<br>
<b>Text input</b>: Select "keyboard" from menu, tap keyboard icon.
<br>
<b>Correction</b>: Tap input text and edit.
<br>
<b>Alternatives</b>: Tap output text.
<br>
<b>Grammar info</b>: Tap any of the alternatives.
<br>
<b>Confidence</b>: colour of output text
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color:palegreen">Green</span>: semantic, probably correct (but has alternatives)</li>
<li><span style="background-color:yellow">Yellow</span>: syntactic, often incorrect (has alternatives)</li>
<li><span style="background-color:pink">Light red</span>: chunk-based, probably incorrect (has alternatives)</li>
<li><span style="background-color:red">Dark red</span>: word-based, often very bad</li>
</ul>
<br>
<b>Topics</b> (new, select from menu): Words grouped by semantic categories, with WordNet glosses.
<br>
<b>Phrasebook</b> (new, select from menu): Conceptual authoring with the green translations.
</p>
<hr>
<h2>More details</h2>
<p>
GF Offline Translator is based on grammar and semantics. It is compact in size
and gives control on quality. Its technology is inspired by compilers, which are
programs that translate computer languages.
Most other translators for human language are based on
statistics and have less control of quality and are much bigger, so that
they require either an internet connection or a huge storage on your phone.
</p>
The app indicates translation confidence with colours:
<ul>
<li><b>Green</b>:
semantic translation, should be correct.
But not necessarily the only correct one.
You can tap the output to see alternatives.
</li>
<li><b>Yellow</b>:
syntactic translation, should be grammatically correct.
But can be very strange in its interpretation and choice of words.
</li>
<li><b>Light red</b>:
chunk translation, probably incorrect.
Builds the translation from small pieces.
</li>
<li><b>Dark red</b>:
word-by-word translation, almost certainly incorrect.
Builds the translation word by word.
</li>
</ul>
The green translations come from a tourist phrasebook, which allows
you to translate things like "hello" and "how far is the airport from
the hotel".
</p>
<p>
You can translate both speech and text, as selected in the menu in the
upper right corner. Both kinds of input can be edited with the
keyboard by first tapping at the input field. This is often needed
because of <b>speech recognition errors</b>. Changing words
from <b>upper to lower case</b> may also be needed.
At the moment, <b>Japanese</b> and <b>Thai</b> input must be separated
to words, whereas Chinese works without spaces.
</p>
<p>
Translation works between any of the 16 supported languages, which means 240
language pairs in the current version. But different languages are on different levels of development.
The following table gives a rough idea of what to expect:
</p>
<p>
<center>
<table rules=all border=yes>
<tr> <th></th> <th>coverage</th> <th>quality</th> <th>speed</th> <th>speech</th> </tr>
<tr> <th>Bulgarian</th> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td><td bgcolor=palegreen></td> <td bgcolor=yellow>in only</td></tr>
<tr> <th>Catalan</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td></tr>
<tr> <th>Chinese</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> </tr>
<tr> <th>Dutch</th> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td> </tr>
<tr> <th>English</th> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td> </tr>
<tr> <th>Estonian</th> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=red></td></tr>
<tr> <th>Finnish</th> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td></tr>
<tr> <th>French</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td></tr>
<tr> <th>German</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td></tr>
<tr> <th>Hindi</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=red></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> </tr>
<tr> <th>Italian</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=pink></td><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td></tr>
<tr> <th>Japanese*</th><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=pink></td><td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td></tr>
<tr> <th>Russian</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=red></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> </tr>
<tr> <th>Spanish</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td><td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td></tr>
<tr> <th>Swedish</th> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td> <td bgcolor=yellow></td></tr>
<tr> <th>Thai*</th> <td bgcolor=pink></td> <td bgcolor=pink></td><td bgcolor=yellow></td> <td bgcolor=palegreen></td></tr>
</table>
</center>
* For translation from Japanese and Thai you need to separate each word with a space
</p>
<p>
The speech input and output use Google's voice services. Their status
can hence change without notice. You can make it more stable by
installing third-party speech tools, such as SVOX, which provides
output for most of the listed languages.
</p>
<p>
When you tap on a translation you get a screen with <b>alternative translations</b>.
Tapping on each of the alternatives
gives you <b>grammatical information</b>:
an inflection table, if it is a single word,
and a syntax tree otherwise.
</p>
<p>
The app also provides an <b>input method</b> which you can use as
an alternative keyboard which allows you to do translation from
other applications, for instance while you are entering SMS or e-mail.
To activate it go to Settings > Language &amp; input.
</p>
<p>
The translation works <b>completely off-line</b>, without
internet connection, when doing text-based translation.
Even speech works off-line in some languages,
but being on-line may give you better
speech input and output and more languages.
</p>
<p>
You can also install third-party off-line speech engines, such as
<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=SVOX+Mobile+Voices&hl=en">SVOX</a>.
Consult the voice/language settings on your phone to find the optimal
speech engines, and restart the app after changing the settings.
</p>
<p>
The GF Offline Translator is powered by
<a href="http://www.grammaticalframework.org/">GF</a>, Grammatical Framework.
It is open-source software,
built by support from the GF community and from <a href="http://www.digitalgrammars.com/">Digital Grammars</a>.
</p>
<p>
<i>Digital Grammars is a company that can tailor this app to you needs and provide good
translation for the kind of vocabulary you need. Just tell us what you want to see
in the green area!</i>
</p>
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</html>