Translation / analysis projects

Meta SC Next
1

hi,
I was in the group from Berlin (Aj Piyadhammo) helping you out a little. Thank you for your effort and this project.

I got involved because I was trying a do some research around TextMining the suttas. I learned about your translation approach (using simple English etc.).

Now I have some questions and I was wondering if Aj @sujato could help me out an point me in the right direction.

  1. Is the translation project still going on? As far as I could see I was not able to find out how this would go. Is there somewhere a description how to set up and transaltion environment using SC servcices? (there are some older forum topics discussing pootle etc.)

  2. There was a discussion about using TextAnalytics for the suttas. Is someone researching this or working with this?

  3. Aj @sujato was somewhere mentioning some sort of cathalogue used to “normalize” the translation. Translating the same pali words always in the same English words. Is this catalogue available?

Again, thank you for your great work.
Andreas

7 Likes
2

I also want to know the current status. Here’s what I know so far.

  1. Aj @sujato translates the 4 Nikayas. The pootle data can be accessed on github here.
  2. I have begun some Text Analytics/NLP on suttas, using SC data and others. Some examples: Pali Compound, DPPN, and PTS Dictionary. I will start working on pootle data soon.
  3. I think you can use the pootle data for normalization. Pootle should help you do this when you use it. But you can also extract them directly from the data too.
4 Likes
3

Hi to both of you, thanks so much for your interest.

The translations of the four nikayas are complete; however, proofreading is still ongoing, and we anticipate it will be completed in about 1 or 2 months. Use the current data for playing around, but I would recommend waiting until the proofing is finished before doing any serious work.

This is something we’re interested in, but so far haven’t had the resources to do anything. We’d love to collaborate with any projects, though!

I didn’t keep any specific list of terminology. Actually I started out doing this, but it ended up being time-consuming and distracting so I dropped it. However it wouldn’t be too hard to just make a list from scratch with, say, a few hundred technical terms.

The translation environment we use is indeed Pootle, and this is set up to integrate with the new site. If you want to have a look at how it works, let me know and I’ll give you an account. But we’re still smothing some rough edges over; Pootle is very tricky to work with on the developer’s side. Easy for users, though!

5 Likes
4

Thank you for your answers.

Ajahn, I woud like to have a better insight what you guys are doing with the poodle framework. I would love to have an account.

Thanks
Andreas

3 Likes
5

@sujato: yes, I would like to have an account…thank you.

1 Like
6

I would love to join in on this project, too; Ajahn @sujato , could I also get login access to Pootle?

@Andreas, could I hear more about your project? In my professional life, I specialize in Data Engineering. I’m sure we can collaborate, to great effect.

3 Likes
7

Thank you all so much for your great offers to help. We are a bit flat out and overstretched at the moment but we will get back to you! When we’re ready, we will probably put a new post up on D&D here to let everybody know. I’m sure other people are interested too. It is our aim to have the whole site translated in as many languages as possible, not just the texts but also the site UI.

5 Likes