...making Linux just a little more fun!
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
Announcing apertium-ht-en 0.1.0
In response to a request from volunteers at Crisis Commons (http://crisiscommons.org), we have put some effort into creating a Haitian Creole to English module for Apertium. We do not usually make releases at such an early stage of development, but because of the circumstances, we think it's better to make available something that at least partly works, despite its numerous flaws, than to hold off until we can meet our usual standards.
The present release is for Haitian Creole to English only; much of the vocabulary was derived from a spell checking dictionary using cognate induction methods, and is most likely incorrect -- CMU have graciously provided Open Source bilingual data, but have deliberately used a GPL-incompatible licence, which we cannot use. We hope that they will see fit to change this.
Many thanks to Kevin Scannell for providing us with spell checking data; to Francis Tyers and Kevin Unhammer for their contributions; and to the Apertium community for their support and indirect help.
I would like to dedicate this releas to the memory of my grandmother, Anne O'Regan, who passed away on Monday the 18th, just after I began working on this.
-- <Leftmost> jimregan, that's because deep inside you, you are evil. <Leftmost> Also not-so-deep inside you.
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 11:15:58PM +0000, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
> Announcing apertium-ht-en 0.1.0 > > In response to a request from volunteers at Crisis Commons > (http://crisiscommons.org), we have put some effort into creating > a Haitian Creole to English module for Apertium. We do not usually > make releases at such an early stage of development, but because of > the circumstances, we think it's better to make available something > that at least partly works, despite its numerous flaws, than to > hold off until we can meet our usual standards.
Well done, with good reasoning.
> I would like to dedicate this releas to the memory of my grandmother, > Anne O'Regan, who passed away on Monday the 18th, just after I began > working on this.
Jimmy, please accept our condolences on your loss. Our best wishes to you and your family, and may all of you be comforted.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
2010/1/25 Ben Okopnik <ben@linuxgazette.net>:
> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 11:15:58PM +0000, Jimmy O'Regan wrote: >> Announcing apertium-ht-en 0.1.0 >> >> In response to a request from volunteers at Crisis Commons >> (http://crisiscommons.org), we have put some effort into creating >> a Haitian Creole to English module for Apertium. We do not usually >> make releases at such an early stage of development, but because of >> the circumstances, we think it's better to make available something >> that at least partly works, despite its numerous flaws, than to >> hold off until we can meet our usual standards. > > Well done, with good reasoning. >
After a quick, unscientific comparison with the statistical system put
together by another set of Crisis Commons volunteers it appears to me
to be about on equal footing; I'm currently at MT Marathon, where I
plan to try building both a statistical system of my own, and a hybrid
system - hopefully, an extra week of work will give something much
more useful 
>> I would like to dedicate this releas to the memory of my grandmother, >> Anne O'Regan, who passed away on Monday the 18th, just after I began >> working on this. > > Jimmy, please accept our condolences on your loss. Our best wishes to > you and your family, and may all of you be comforted. >
Thanks. My grandmother had just recently reached the ripe old age of 88, and I think it was just her time, though apparently the hospital staff also agreed :/
-- <Leftmost> jimregan, that's because deep inside you, you are evil. <Leftmost> Also not-so-deep inside you.