Main Points

This is an application not to translate strictly, but to serve as a translation aid. The idea is to create a C# application which assists in building full Perrill translations and creating output in some form for displaying them. It will involve an interactive application that will suggest the most likely meaning of each word, present a drop down list of alternatives, or give the user an opportunity to type in a new definition. This would eliminate the need to constantly refer to a dictionary in the process of looking up words over and over. Once it's in the application's dictionary (an XML file or database?) and the application will notify you of the definitions. Over time this should let us build up online dictionaries for any and all languages. It will also streamline translations of foreign language passages which can be copied complete into the application for processing.

Initial C# String Manipulation

Ideally, I'd like to incorporate all 7 layers including images of the original texts. Probably not such a big deal for books, though old books are cool, but for ancient texts and manuscripts, it's universally important. This will present a strip of original text, the original language in the native characters, transliteration, and the various translation options. I'd also like to flip from this display to a display of the original work so that people familiar with any particular language can enjoy the work just as if they had it before them. Not exactly sure how to provide a translation with that kind of view, but is it even necessary? I do think it would be nice to have that.

Mightn't this one day turn into a real translation program. Well, the answer is probably that somewhere around 2050 it might. In the meantime, we have much less ambitious goals for our Perrill Translator, though it seems reasonable that it will transform the translation process from something that requires copious flipping of dictionary pages, into something much more streamlined for "mass production" of translations. Something, that will make language studies much simpler. And something which will serve as an incredible study tool for students learning a language or trying to decipher the intricacies of a foreign language text.

  1. PerrillTranslator01Test.aspx - This demo presents a basic user interface for entering and manipulating strings for display to a webpage.
    [chroniclemaster1, 2008/08/07]