QT - Dr. Samuel Olamijulo wrote:
> For the special attention of all who are working on Machine
> Translation for Yoruba,

I'm not sure that anyone is...

> I am sure you will find very useful this relatively recent
> Yoruba and English publication. Corresponding Yoruba and English
> translations are on each half of 1978 pages. The publishers must
> have it in digital format.=20
>
> Title: BIBELI MIMO =96 HOLY BIBLE King James Version

I neglected to mention in my earlier post that the bilingual text one uses for statistical MT should be in the same genre that one hopes to translate. So parallel news text if you hope to use MT for news, parallel text of computer manuals if you hope to use MT to translate computer manuals, etc. The Bible is indeed a source, and is available in print form (if not in electronic form) for most written languages. But it would probably only work well as an MT source only if you wanted to translate other texts of a religious sort. (I think one might be able to extract other kinds of information, e.g. about morphology, from a Bible; but then Yoruba doesn't have much in the way of morphology.) --
 Mike Maxwell
 maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu

 Yoruba-English Bilingual Texts on Same of 1978 Pages

For the special attention of all who are working on Machine Translation for Yoruba,

I am sure you will find very useful this relatively recent Yoruba and English publication. Corresponding Yoruba and English translations are on each half of 1978 pages. The publishers must have it in digital format.

Title: BIBELI MIMO – HOLY BIBLE King James Version

Produced year 2004 by
 
Bible Society of Nigeria

Tel: 234 1 545 7524 ; 587 6471

Website: http://www.biblesociety-nigeria.org/

Contacts: http://www.biblesociety-nigeria.org/nigeria-3.htm

18 Wharf Road,
Apapa
Lagos, Nigeria

Thank you.
Dr. Samuel Kayode Olamijulo

Dear Samuel, Andrew, all,

Yes there was an effort last year that produced basic locale data for OpenOffice, which was then also rewritten to also submit to CLDR. This (along with locales for some other Nigerian languages including Hausa and Igbo) was facilitated by Alberto Escudero-Pascual and Louise Berthilson using the locale generator at http://www.it46.se/localegen/ . So there is something usable for basic localization.

CLDR, however, is on a different site. See http://unicode.org/cldr/ - there is some introductory information.

The way that CLDR is set up it is almost like a glossary of basic terms and it would help to have someone review those. See another view of the data at http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/summary/yo.html (this is different than the page Andrew gave, but with the same info in a different way).

Not sure if there are established Yoruba words for some of the territories or languages listed, or how those will help localize, say, a cellphone or browser or web-page. Nevertheless, the Yoruba language experts should have a look.

BTW, out of the total 2136 lines, the entire alphabet is listed on line 1629 (with auxiliary characters, such as used for loan words in line 1628).

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project

QT - BisharatNet wrote:
> The issue of machine translation (MT) for Yoruba and other
> African languages per /m303 and /m304 deserves a lot more
> attention. Good to see what LDC and a few other centers are
> doing, but one has the impression that if some serious resources
> were made available, it should be possible to have MT in a
> relatively short time. I am no expert, just looking at what is
> available now for language pairs like English Chinese, or
> Japanese, or Arabic. Unfortunately there is not a lot of ready
> material to work with as Mike suggests, even for a language like
> Yoruba that has some literature. Don
 
Not sure which Mike that was (probably not me), but the amount of material in Yoruba is precisely the problem for statistically-based MT. The necessary resource is machine-readable bilingual text. I was at the LDC until a year or so ago, and at least at that point there was hardly any *monolingual* Yoruba text, much less bilingual text, in electronic form. At that point, the plans at LDC for getting electronic bilingual text were to buy printed newspapers and key them in.
Primitive, to put it mildly.

For Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, on the other hand, there is "tons" of bilingual text available on the Internet. And for many other major languages, there is at least monolingual text: Tagalog, Cebuano, other major Philippine languages; Swahili, and maybe Zulu (not sure about the other languages of South Africa, apart of course from Afrikaans); Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, many other Indic languages; Amharic and to a lesser extent Tigrinya; all European languages; Thai, Bahasa Indonesian, Vietnamese, Persian/ Farsi, and so forth. There are even some
indigenous languages of the Americas that have some Internet text, such as Guarani and maybe some of the Quechua languages.

FWIW, I suspect Igbo and Hausa are in the same situation as Yoruba, although I haven't checked lately.

There is also rule-based MT. I believe the African Languages Technology Initiative, a group in Nigeria, was looking at that, but last I heard they didn't have any funding for MT.

For the record, here's what was available in the way of
computer-readable resources when I was at the LDC:
   http://lodl.ldc.upenn.edu/found.cgi?lan=YORUBA
The list of potential resources is a template we used; as you can see, it's virtually blank.

Here's a more recent survey, done about a year ago:
   http://lodl.ldc.upenn.edu/LCTL/Yoruba_harvest.html
--
 Mike Maxwell
 maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu

Andrew Cunningham's response:

Having a quick look at http://unicode.org/cldr/apps/survey?_=yo, it would appear that most of the work that needs to be done, is adding terminology, e.g. country names, language names, currency names, calendar/time terminology, etc.

The basic character requirements have been done. Not sure about number formats, etc.

Andrew

The Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) is accepting new locale data and, in the case of Yoruba which has a locale, additional information and corrections. See http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/pu...forum/msg00581.html . Samuel Olamijulo mailed the following appeal out to several people and lists. I repost it here for the record. Don

Respected Yoruba People and friends everywhere, good evening.
 
Please read the request below. The time is short but the request appears of tremendous importance for future easier more effective Internet communication in Yoruba than at present.
 
I earnestly BEG Yoruba people with Language, IT and other relevant competencies to urgently and openly discuss and cooperate on this one for Harmonious Competent input.
 
I am a Yoruba Pediatrician and I BEG more competent volunteers to coordinate the discussion and submission of the best input possible on Yoruba.
 
Thank you,
Dr. Samuel Kayode Olamijulo

Thanks, Tom, for the info on the Mac keyboard /m305. I posted it on the Yoruba language profile at http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Yoruba (see 7.2). Don

The issue of machine translation (MT) for Yoruba and other African languages per /m303 and /m304 deserves a lot more attention. Good to see what LDC and a few other centers are doing, but one has the impression that if some serious resources were made available, it should be possible to have MT in a relatively short time. I am no expert, just looking at what is available now for language pairs like English <-> Chinese, or Japanese, or Arabic. Unfortunately there is not a lot of ready material to work with as Mike suggests, even for a language like Yoruba that has some literature. Don

In case anyone needs a Yoruba keyboard for Mac OS X, I have an experimental one available. You can find the link here:

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2007/02/typing-yoruba.html

Suggestions for improvements, etc. welcome.

QT - kúnlé wrote:
> Sir, I don't know If I can get any software or machine
> translator that can translate Yoruba language.

I very much doubt that this exists. There was hope for a Yoruba MT project at http://www.alt-i.org/projects.htm several years ago, but their website says:

     We were scheduled to start a project on machine
     translation of Yoruba into English and vice versa
     during 2004. However, We were not able to commence
     this project due to funding constraints. Efforts
     are still on to raise funds for this project.

The LDC has two pages of "resources" for Yoruba, at
    http://lodl.ldc.upenn.edu/LCTL/Yoruba_harvest.html
and
    http://lodl.ldc.upenn.edu/found.cgi?lan=YORUBA
but nothing for MT (and the latter is virtually empty). According to these listings, there are virtually no Yoruba-English bilingual texts on the web that could be fed into a statistical MT machine.

I would be happy to be proven wrong on this pessimistic appraisal! --
 Mike Maxwell
 maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu

Sir, I don't know If I can get any software or machine translator that can translate Yoruba language. I need it for my work, I have thick volume of english articles to translate for my community. thanks

The PanAfriL10n.org page on Yoruba has been updated. See http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Yoruba (corrections, more updates are invited).

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project

Dear Samuel, I hope your efforts work out. One thing that I have noticed among people in the the US and Africa, is the tendency to uderestimate the potential for children to learn two (or sometimes more) languages fluently. Some parents have the idea that learning more than one language means learning less well, but that is not true. Bilingualism can be a long-term advantage for children (and best to start with the language(s) that the parents are fluent in).

Don

 
Yoruba Home Training - Web Help List by Olamijulo S.K.

http://www.hopeafricaepublisher.com/yohtlist0107.html
 
From this year 2007 onwards, it is a cardinal imperative that Yorubas unite in deliberately encouraging and assisting one another to promote the speaking, reading and writing of Yoruba in Yoruba People homes worldwide, irrespective of what other languages Yorubas are able to speak, read or write. We require no further Government or other official intervention to personally get on with this widely neglected personal and family responsibility.

Following are some suggestions and helpful Internet links for all who seriously desire to Read, Write, Speak, Sing, Watch, Learn, Think and Dream in Yoruba. Please encourage and assist all others worldwide who have, or should have, the desire to do likewise.

WE SHALL CONSTANTLY PRAY AND LABOR FOR PEACE, UNITY AND PROGRESS AMONG ALL YORUBAS FROM WHEREVER WE ARE LOCATED WORLDWIDE.

Read more about:

P2. YORUBA INTERNET RADIO

P3. YORUBA FOOD

P4. YORUBA CULTURE QUICK REMINDERS

P5. YORUBA ON COMPUTERS AND INTERNET

P6. YORUBA DICTIONARIES

P7. YORUBA PROVERBS

P8. YORUBA PEOPLE PUBLICATIONS

P9. USEFUL WEBSITES

P10. YORUBA CURRENT WORLD POPULATION ESTIMATE
OVER 100 MILLION

P11. YORUBA E-GROUPS

P12. BIBELI YORUBA ATOKA-YORUBA REFERENCE BIBLE ONLINE

P13. YORUBA ART ON THE WEB

P14. UNIVERSTIES WITH NET ACCESSIBLE YORUBA PROGRAMS

P15. RELATED LINKS

At: Yoruba Home Training - Web Help List by Olamijulo S.K.

http://www.hopeafricaepublisher.com/yohtlist0107.html
 
Thank you.
From Dr. Samuel Kayode Olamijulo

Dear Isaac, Sorry for the slow reply. I hope you looked through the list of messages which has some keyboard information (Konyin production keyboard and various keyboard drivers for Tavultesoft Keyman, MSKLC and others).

See also:
* http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Yoruba
* http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Tools

Perhaps others will have some further suggestions.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project

Dear Sir,
I thank you very much indeed for your
e-mail message.

As a matter of the utmost urgency,
 I need, very desperately, (almost instantly!!!), your advice, suggestions, etc., as to how one could gain access to a web site/source, etc., in connection with the setting up of the key-board, in terms of the Yoruba language------in a straightforward format (involving the shedding of tears, as little as possible!!!!)-------hitherto, one's experience, relative to the above-mentioned key board, has been really very frustrating------to say the least!!!!

I would greatly appreciate receiving your advice, suggestions, etc., as soon as you are able to do so.

Thanking you in advance for your response to my request, as outlined above, Sincerely,
Isaac Jadesimi
E-mail address: jades@tamcotec.com
Message -----
From: "QT - BisharatNet" <qtopic+15-KKgbRqJUAR8@quicktopic.com>
To: "QT topic subscribers" <qtopic+subs@quicktopic.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 10:32 AM
Subject: Yoruba language & ICT (fonts, keyboards & applications)


>
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