When is translation not translation?

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DaveBee
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby DaveBee » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:39 pm

Xenops wrote:A hundred years ago, didn't they learn Greek and Latin through translation work?
Memory tells me that in Tom Brown's school days it was reported to be common practise for old translations to be passed from one generation of students to the next. Cheaters all!

Young Brown set a better example. Fine fellow.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Iversen » Wed Mar 29, 2017 10:06 am

If cheating brought you the invaluable resource of parallel bilingual texts then cheating was not only OK, but an excellent idea - something any sane and sensible student should do. The problem was that the clandestine key notes weren't used in a constructive and efficient way, but only to survive a day or two more in the school system.
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Cainntear
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 29, 2017 12:08 pm

rdearman wrote:
Cainntear wrote:The program was really straightforward. It uses a simple algorithm to track the difficulty of prompts and to introduce new elements to be learned. In a text window, it throws question after question at me, and I type in the answers and get immediate feedback. The more I used it, the quicker I got.


I would like to explore this in more detail. I assume you created a program with had the L1 prompt, and the L2 answer in some type of database, such that you could compare your response?
Using your example:

(L1 Data segment contained in DB) My mother is wearing a hat.
(User Response) Ma mère porte un chapeau
(L2 Data segment held in DB) Ma mère porte un chapeau

Or were you generating an English sentence with no reference check included?

It was generating a bunch of equivalent phrases and sentences in Corsican and English.

It prompted in L1, compared the answer to L2 and adjusted the score of all the language items tested either up or down depending on whether the answer was correct or not. The scoring was binary and absolute -- it was either 100% correct or it was wrong, but I'd coded it modularly so that I could replace the scoring algorithm without ripping out the rest of the code.

Unfortunately, hard-coding all the language stuff in Python was leading to a combinatorial explosion in complexity, so I went back to the drawing board and started defining an abstract rules format and a parser that would convert the rules into Prolog assertions, but eventually when I realised I had left out something that was absolutely necessary, I found I couldn't easily retrofit it, and went back to Python, but again starting from the same (or rather a very slightly modified) rule definition format.
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reineke
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby reineke » Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:01 pm

Cainntear wrote:Unfortunately, hard-coding all the language stuff... was leading to a combinatorial explosion in complexity, so I went back to the drawing board...


A story about language learning.
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Cainntear
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:30 pm

reineke wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Unfortunately, hard-coding all the language stuff... was leading to a combinatorial explosion in complexity, so I went back to the drawing board...


A story about language learning.

Nonononono. There is less complexity in language than we tend to think -- it's just that in trying to simplify out the complexity, we inadvertently increase it. For example, by trying to avoid talking about "aspect", we end up increasing the number of tenses, and we hide the logical interactions between tense and aspect. Then at the end of the day, we still expect the learner to intuit the pattern and be able to deal with things like future perfect progressive without ever teaching it.

In my case the problem was that computer code isn't like the human brain, so rules that work well for the brain can't be efficiently coded directly in a procedural-imperative style.
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reineke
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby reineke » Fri Mar 31, 2017 2:21 am

"The way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful if one follows patterns."

Seneca
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