Language translator script?

[Kevin Brown]

No the dragon mag didn't go into depth, but the language is a tit-for-tat
replacement, no grammatical differences from english (gee, I wonder why).  I
figured the script might just leave unknown words alone.  I guess it's time for
me to dig out my perl books and see what I can do in the next month or two.  The
wrapper script would be nice to have if you have the time to code it up, I would
appreciate it.

> \_ could do what I wanted.  Basically I'm hoping to find a script or program that
> \_ can take english and parse it into dwarven (maybe by reading a text file),
> \_ something along the lines of an ircbot without needing to connect to irc.  I

> Ah, NLP raises it's ugly head at last in PLUG.  /me shivers

> There's a problem with doing what you suggest.  Well, more than one,
> but we'll forgo verb tensing, syntax, false cognates, typo handling,
> and a host of others and deal with one everyone can grasp and is fun:
> idioms.

> Idioms are the magic that makes a language colorful.  "You're a pain
> in the ass" does not literally translate to the concept of you being
> a tender spot on a mule.  However, stupid translators will translate
> it that way...and miss.

> So, unless the Dragon article has gone *way* deep, it's just a crude
> approximation of a real language.  Crude approximations can be hacked,
> but leave plenty of room for doubt.

> You can code an amusing "little" perl script in ~20 lines of driver
> code + X number of substitution lines to do a stupid translation.  But
> what happens when you type in a word the translator doesn't know?  Or
> you pull a typo?  Or proper names?

> So....  It's amusing as a thought, but I don't think it's a go unless
> Dragon did it right, and that is a pain.

> As an alternate you could try Klingon.  There are whole books and
> probably several things online to help with the proper pronuncian of
> 'gahk'.  It wouldn't suprise me if someone even coded the phenomes for
> you.

> I'll be happy to gen the wrapper script, but you'd have to cope with
> typing in valid perl expressions to do the substitutions.