Review: LDOCE

Review: Longman Dictionary

LDOCE, an acronym for The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online is language resource, an online version of the CD-ROM of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Updated Edition. It is built using a corpus.

The reference web is owned and operated by Pearson Education Limited, a registered company in England and Wales. The dictionary is powered by the IDM, which is a XML Content Management Software.

All Longman dictionaries are compiled using the Longman Corpus Network – a huge database of 330 million words from a wide range of real-life sources such as books, newspapers and magazines. One of the main benefits of working with the Longman Corpus Network is that the dictionary can give full coverage of thousands of natural word combinations (or collocations). Using the Longman Learner’s Corpus – 12 million words of students’ essays and exam scripts – typical learners’ mistakes are analysed and so the dictionary include notes on how to avoid them.

Pearson Longman has published a number of dictionaries all based in the Longman Corpus Network. These include dictionaries for beginners, intermediate and advance learners, specialist dictionaries, bilingual, etc.

What does it offer?

• Fully searchable contents of the A-Z text of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
• Selected headwords pronounced in British and American English ( It is necessary to buy the full CD-ROM version for pronunciation of ALL headwords, including names of people and places).
• Selected example sentences pronounced, to help you improve your intonation (It is necessary to buy the full CD-ROM version to hear 88,000 example sentences pronounced).

How to use this dictionary

First of all, we have to type a word in the search box:

Once the search is done, this is what we get:

The source will give us the whole collection of possibilities that, including that word, its corpus recognizes. This is very useful as, though not all are academic, it provides many options to research within a word: the noun, the verb, etc., idioms, types of something.

The next step is to choose the word we are looking for, and automatically we will get the category (noun, verb, adjective, etc), definitions, examples and idioms or phrases.

If the user has a problem with any word in the definition above, with a simple double-click on it, a new window will pop-up with its information and related words:

In some cases, it includes a displaying window called Word Focus. This provides with words related that does not necessarily have the same root. As for the word house:

This site also features “the word of the day”:

In short, it is a very useful monolingual dictionary for it is easy to use, it takes the user to other words in a simple way. Furthermore, it gives the phonetic representation and sound in both British and American pronunciation. A picture is provided in almost every entry for a visual learning.

Sources:

Longman English Dictionary Online, http://www.ldoceonline.com/, Retrieved: 07/03/10, 12:32

IDM – XML Content Management Software, http://www.idm.fr/, Retrieved: 07/03/10, 12:35

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (2009, July 31). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:22, April 20, 2010, fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Longman_Dictionary_of_Contemporary_English&oldid=305242523

Review: MT – Google Translate

Google Translate is a service provided by Google Inc. to translate a section of text, or a webpage, into another language. The service limits the number of paragraphs, or range of technical terms, that will be translated. It is important to mention that Google has managed to develop and use its own translation software.,unlike other translation services such as Babel Fish, AOL, and Yahoowhich use SYSTRAN.

In order too acquire its huge amount of linguistic data, Google used United Nationsdocuments, and so Google now has a 6-language corpus of around 20 billion words’ worth of human translations.

How does it work?

First, we have to choose the languages in which we want to work:

Next step is to paste the text we want to be translated into the window

Automatically, the MT would do its job, and the translated version of the text pasted, would appear below:

You can see, the tool also offers the possibility to listen to the translation by clicking

However, Google Translate, like other automatic translation tools, has its limitations. While it can help the reader to understand the general content of a foreign language text, it does not always deliver accurate translations. This last  is the main goal of this review. In three short translations, from English to Spanish, I will check some of the mistakes made by the MT and that can only be corrected with human supervision.

FIRST TEXT

Original text from Vogue UK:

VICTORIA BECKHAM has landed herself yet another Vogue cover.

The fashion designer and former Spice Girl features on the front of the May issue of German Vogue which, as it’s a denim special, comes in denim packaging.

In the magazine, Victoria talks about her ideal pair of jeans: “The legs should be cut super long, with narrow knee. There is nothing more unattractive than to feel bruised on the waist.”

Inside, meanwhile, Posh strikes a pose dressed in a lace blouse and perched on a playground duck.

Beckham appeared on the cover of British Vogue back in April 2008, followed byVogue India the same year and Vogue Russia in February 2009.

Google Translator:

Victoria Beckham se ha volvió a ser portada de Vogue.

La diseñadora de moda y ex Spice Girl características en el frente de la edición de mayo de la revista Vogue alemana que, como es un especial de mezclilla, viene en envases de mezclilla.

En la revista, Victoria habla sobre su pareja ideal de jeans: “Las piernas deben ser cortados super largo, con la rodilla estrecha. No hay nada más atractivo que sentirse golpeado en la cintura.”

En el interior, por su parte, las huelgas una pose elegante vestido con una blusa de encaje y se posó en un pato patio de recreo.

Beckham apareció en la portada del Vogue británico en abril de 2008, seguida por la India Vogue el mismo año y Rusia Vogue en febrero de 2009.

Human Translation:

Victorio Beckham ha vuelto a ser portada de Vogue.

La diseñadora de moda y ex Spice Girl, aparece en la portada del número de Mayo de la Vogue alemana, la cual, como es un especial de jeans, viene en un paquete de denim.

En la revista, Victoria habla sobre sus vaqueros ideales: “Las piernas deben ser super largas, con la rodilla estrecha. No hay nada menos atractivo que sentir magulladuras en la cintura.”

En el interior, entretanto, Posh posa vestida con una blusa de encaje y sentada sobre un pato de patio de colegio.

Beckham apareción en la portada de la Vogue inglesa en Abril de 2008, seguida por la Vogue india el mismo año y la Vogue rusa en Febrero de 2009.

SECOND TEXT

Original text from BBC news:

A princess hoping to break a world record and a man dressed as the Angel of the North are among those running this year’s London Marathon.

Up to 36,000 people are taking on the world famous 26.2-mile course through the city.

Princess Beatrice, 21, hopes to become the first royal to complete the route.

She has joined a “human caterpillar” of 34 runners aiming to beat the world record for the most people to finish a marathon while tied together.

They are tied together two by two with bungee cords.

The princess, who is running for Children in Crisis, said she was “very, very excited”.

The Icelandic ash cloud had threatened to disrupt the race and many of the elite athletes only arrived after boarding a specially chartered flight from Madrid on Thursday.

Google translator:

Una princesa con la esperanza de romper un récord mundial y un hombre vestido como el Ángel del Norte se encuentran entre los que dirigen este año maratón de Londres.

Hasta 36.000 personas están tomando en el mundo famoso campo de 26,2 kilómetros a través de la ciudad.
Princesa Beatriz, de 21 años, espera convertirse en la primera real para completar la ruta.
Ella se ha unido a una oruga “humana” de los 34 corredores con el objetivo de batir el récord mundial para la mayoría de la gente para terminar una maratón mientras atadas.
Ellos están unidos de dos en dos con cuerdas elásticas.
La princesa, que se está ejecutando para Niños en Crisis, dijo que estaba “muy, muy emocionado”.
La nube de cenizas islandesa había amenazado con interrumpir la carrera y muchos de los atletas de élite sólo llegó después de abordar un vuelo especial fletado desde Madrid, el jueves.

Human Translation:

Una princesa con la esperanza de romper un récordo mundial y un hombre vestido como el Ángel del Norte están entre los que correran este año el Maraton de Londres.

Hasta 36.000 personas van a tomar parte en el mundialmente famosa carrera de 26.2 millas a través de la ciudad.

La princesa Beatrice, 21, espera convertirse en la primera persona de la realeza en completar la ruta.

Se ha unido a la “cadena humana” de 34 corredores que tratan de batir el récord mundial del mayor número de personas que terminan un maratón estando atados.

Están atados de dos en dos con cuerdas elásticas.

La princesa, que corre a favor de Children in Crisis, dijo que estaba “muy, muy emocionada”.

La nube de cenizas islandesa había amenazado con interrumpir la carrera y muchos de los atletas de élite sólo llegaron tras embarcar en un vuelo especial fletdo desde Madrid, el jueves.

THIRD TEXT

Original text from Guardian.co.uk:

Red Queen is my daughter, says Bonham Carter

When she is older, two-year-old Nell Burton may view her father’s film ofAlice in Wonderland with a particularly curious eye. For her mother,Helena Bonham Carter, last night revealed that she based her tyrannical Red Queen on her and Tim Burton‘s young daughter.

While the toddler is presumably not given to ordering the beheadings of those who surround her, Bonham Carter said Nell was the main inspiration for the bossy, spiteful monarch who maintains a reign of terror over Wonderland in Burton’s 3D CGI reimagining.

“I thought: well, she’s a toddler, because she’s got the big head,” Bonham Carter revealed at a press conference ahead of last night’s London premiere. “She’s a tyrant … toddlers are tyrants. The ‘no sympathy for any other living creature’ – that’s our toddler, in fact.

Google Translator:

Reina Roja es mi hija, dice Bonham Carter

Cuando ella es mayor, de dos años de edad, Nell Burton puede ver las películas de su padre de Alice in Wonderland, con un ojo particularmente curioso. Para su madre, Helena Bonham Carter, anoche reveló que basó su tiránica Reina Roja en ella y la joven hija de Tim Burton.
Aunque el niño probablemente no es dado a ordenar la decapitación de quienes le rodean, Bonham Carter dijo Nell fue la principal inspiración para el monarca autoritario, rencoroso que mantiene un reinado de terror sobre las Maravillas de Burton en 3D CGI reinvención.

“Yo pensé: bueno, es un niño pequeño, porque tiene la cabeza grande”, reveló Bonham Carter en una conferencia de prensa antes del estreno de la noche pasada en Londres. ”Ella es un tirano … los niños son tiranos. El” ninguna simpatía por cualquier otro ser vivo “- ese es nuestro hijo, de hecho.

Human Translation:

Es posible que cuando sea más mayor, Nell Burton, de dos años, vea la película de su padre Alicia in Wonderland con ojos particularmente curiosos. Ya  que su madre, Helena Bonham Carter, reveló anoche que basó su tiránica Reina Roja en la hija que ella y Tim Burton tienen en común.

Mientras que la pequeña probablemente no ordene la decapitación de aquellos que la rodean, Bonham Carter dijo que Nell fue la principal inspiración para mandona y maliciosa monarca que mantiene un reinado de terror sobre El País de las Maravillas en la reinvención en 3D IGC de Burton.

“Pensé: bueno, es la pequeña, porque tiene la cabeza grande,” reveló Bonham Carter  en una conferencia de prensa antes del estreno de anoche en Londres. “Ella es una tirana….los niños son tiranos. La “no simpatía por ningún otro ser viviente” – esa es nuestra pequeña, en realidad”.

MAIN MISTAKES MADE BY MT:

Working with a MT may accelerate the process of translating, but it is always necessary to supervise the work by a person, for this are one of the main mistakes that the machines usually makes when dealing with these two languages:

1. Pronouns and articles: This might be due to the differences in rules between both languages. Spanish needs articles, but as English does not have articles, the translator would sometimes not use them. “Princess Beatrice” > “Princesa Beatriz” > “La princesa Beatrice”.
2. Verb tenses:Many times, MTs have problems when dealing with a verb tense. It mistakes the imperfect with the past perfect; the conditionals, the subjunctive, the active or passive form, etc. ”VICTORIA BECKHAM has landed herself yet another” > “Victoria Beckham se ha volvió a ser” > “Victorio Beckham ha vuelto a ser portada de Vogue.”
3. Abbreviation: “3D CGI” > “3D CGI” > “3D IGC” Here it would be important to change the abbreviation to the translated language for the readers to understand.
4. Reference and Gender: It cannot translate words with the correct gender or number because in English both nouns and adjectives do not have gender nor number inflexion. “toddler” > “el niño” > “la niña” As toddler is a word for both genders, the machine cannot go back and find the reference of the word to use the correct word.
5. Word meanings: There are many problems with the lexicon. When a word has more than one meaning, it cannot choose the correct one taking into account the context. That is the work of the translator, to decide between the many meanings the one that fits best. “features” > “características” > “aparece”. “feature” is here used as a verb, but the machine has taken it as a noun. The same happens with “running” > “dirigen” and “ejecutando” > “corriendo”
6. More mistakes could be mentioned: word order, punctuation, cultural items transmission, expressions, etc.

For further reading,

Using Google Translation in Cross-Lingual Retrieval.

Sources:

• Google Translate. (2010, April 24). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:48, April 25, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Google_Translate&oldid=358090951
• BBC News. Retrieved 11:58, April 25, 2010,http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8641951.stm
• Vogue.com Retrieved 12:16, April 25, 2010,http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/100422-victoria-beckhams-vogue-germany-co.aspx
• Guardian.co.uk Retrieved 12:27, April 25, 2010.http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/feb/26/red-queen-helena-bonham-carter

Review: British National Corpus

The BNC, which stands for the British National Corpus, is a monolingual word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century, both spoken and written.

The project was carried out and is managed by the BNC Consortium, led byOxford University Press, and which includes academic research centres at Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS), the University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (UCREL) at Lancaster University, and the British Library‘s Research and Innovation Centre. Work on building the corpus commenced in 1991 and was completed in 1994. The first general release of the Corpus for European researchers was announced in February 1995.

Later on, a phase of tagging improvement was undertaken at Lancaster University with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Correction and validation of the bibliographic and contextual information in all the BNC Headers was also carried out for this second version of the corpus, known as the BNC World Edition. BNC World was made available for world-wide distribution in 2001.

In response to user feedback, the original SGML version of the corpus was later converted into XML, been the BNC XML Edition released in 2007. All versions of the BNC are worked with XAIRA -an open-source application that can also be used with other corpora or texts in XML-format.

What sort of corpus is the BNC?

“The written part of the BNC (90%) includes, for example, extracts from regional and national newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals for all ages and interests, academic books and popular fiction, published and unpublished letters and memoranda, school and university essays, among many other kinds of text. The spoken part (10%) consists of orthographic transcriptions of unscripted informal conversations (recorded by volunteers selected from different age, region and social classes in a demographically balanced way) and spoken language collected in different contexts, ranging from formal business or government meetings to radio shows and phone-ins.”

Monolingual: It deals with modern British English, not other languages used in Britain. However non-British English and foreign language words do occur in the corpus.

Synchronic: It covers British English of the late twentieth century, rather than the historical development which produced it.

General: It includes many different styles and varieties, and is not limited to any particular subject field, genre or register. In particular, it contains examples of both spoken and written language.

Sample: For written sources, samples of 45,000 words are taken from various parts of single-author texts. Shorter texts up to a maximum of 45,000 words, or multi-author texts such as magazines and newspapers, are included in full. Sampling allows for a wider coverage of texts within the 100 million limit, and avoids over-representing idiosyncratic texts.

How does the corpus work?

You can search for a single word or a phrase, restrict searches by part of speech, search in parts of the corpus only, and much more. The user types a word or phrase in the search box and presses the Return key on his/her keyboard to see up to 50 random hits from the corpus.

In addition to just finding a word or phrase, the Simple Search service can also be used for more complex queries. Use the _ character to match any single word, for example bread _ butter finds bread and butter, bread or butter, bread with butter, etc. Use the = character to restrict searches by part of speech, for example house=VVBfinds only verbal uses of house. Use braces { and } to enclose a regular expression, for example {s[iau]ng}finds sing, sang or sung.

As for the search drive _ crazy:

Clicking the capital letters and numbers in blue would take the user to the directory of bibliography (where from the example was taken from.

Sources:

• The British National Corpus. http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ Retrieved: 21 March, 2010 at 16.07
• British National Corpus. (2009, November 27). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:27, April 20, 2010, fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_National_Corpus&oldid=328182118
• BYU-BNC: BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS. Mark Davies / Brigham Young University. Retrieved 10:29, April 20, 2010, from http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/
• El British National Corpus aplicado a la enseñanza de inglés. In Proz, the translation workplace. Retrieved 11:29, April 25, 2010.http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/1807/1/El-British-National-Corpus-aplicado-a-la-enseñanza-de-inglés
• “Phrases in English” (PIE) and the British National Corpus. Retrieved 11:31, April 25, 2010. http://pie.usna.edu/