About the Simple Translation Tool

This is a simple bilingual document editor. Documents consist of a sequence of segments that are translated independently. The user can import text in the source language and obtain automatically translated text in the target language. Imported text can be segmented based on punctuation. Optionally, one can also use line breaks or blank lines to indicate segmentation in imported text. Text can be edited after it has been imported.

Through menu options, the user sets the source and target language for the document and chooses which translation method to use by default. The tool supports two machine translation services:

• The GF web service. The user picks which GF grammar to use from a menu of available grammars.
• The Apertium web service.

If an unsatisfactory automatic translation is obtained, the user can click on it and replace it with a manual translation. If multiple translations are obtained, one of them is shown by default and the other ones are available in a popup menu.

The tool handles a set of documents. Documents can be named, saved, closed and reopened later. Documents can be saved locally or in the cloud.

TODO

• Text can be imported by copying and pasting and from local files (in browsers that support it, currently Chrome, Firefox and Opera, but not Safari), but other ways could be added.
• Text can be exported by copying and pasting, but other ways could be added.
• GF's lexer/unlexer is used to allow for more natural looking text, but the unlexer does the wrong thing if the first word of a sentence is supposed to be capitalized, e.g. "I am ready." and "Spanish wine is good."
• Document sharing in the cloud.
• Interface to other translation services.
• Guided text entry, using the Minibar or some variant of it.
• Interface to the grammar editor for grammar extension.
• More browser compatibility testing (Chrome, Firefox, Safari & Opera Mobile tested so far).
• ...
• ...

TH