On Jan 8, 2004, at 9:43 AM, Sascha Noyes wrote:
On Thursday 08 January 2004 05:53 am, Gutza wrote:
Arwel Parry wrote:
> Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word
> "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it
> is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means
> "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations...
Perhaps the most famous example would be "libre" and "gratuit"
mapping
onto
the english "free". I agree with Gutza nonetheless that automation
would be a
good idea. The overwhelming majority of words can be translated into
most
languages one-to-one (ie. no ambiguities). This would save us a lot of
work.
And for the few cases where there are problems, they can be corrected
by
hand.
Take, specifically, the Spanish 'libre', the English 'free', and the
French 'gratuit'. Without care, one might end up saying that since
sp:'libre' means en:'free', which means fr:'gratuit',
sp:'libre' also
means fr:'gratuit', which is of course wrong. The transitive property
does not always apply to language. Here out little automaton friend
might run into difficulty, even if he *is* only aiming to "make our
lives easier".
Peter
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