Hi

Have you ever wondered why the English dictionary at lernu! isn't better? Have you ever been annoyed that a certain word is in another language's dictionary but not ours? Sign up to become a dictionary translator! Help add translations to the Esperanto-English dictionary (and English-Esperanto). I have lately been working on improving the Esperanto-English dictionary, but the work would go much faster with others working on it.

Even if your Esperanto vocabulary isn't great, anyone who has a paper dictionary is capable of helping out. This is also a great way of improving your vocabulary while helping out the site.

To sign up as a dictionary translator, write to teamo@lernu.net. Give your username and say which language's dictionary you want to work on, and we'll give you translation rights. Or, maybe you already have translation rights. In any case, post to this forum if you are interested in helping, and we can discuss a strategy to get the dictionary translated as quickly (and as completely) as possible.

I'd definitely be willing to help.

I think that although there are numerous English words not in the dictionary (that should be added), it would also be a great help to find things like the transitivity of verbs and a more precise distinction between words when handed a whole list of translations for a particular English word

For example, look at the word "set", which produces six translations in the Lernu vortaro - all no doubt correct - but no hint is given as to which one is the translation of the particular meaning I have in mind. If I pop open the CEED and look up "set", I actually find a whole slew of translations - nearly a page and a half of them, as it turns out (I picked "set" as an example because I remember reading that it is the most overloaded word in the English language).

I don't know if we need THAT kind of detail in the Lernu vortaro, but there is certainly room for improvement. As I said, I'd be happy to contribute.

Hello, I'm also willing to help. I've sent an e-mail to the teamo, so if I get translation rights, I'm in.

I hope I can help. I have sent an email to teamo.

I also am willing to help. I agree with Riotnrrd that, while a wonderful resource (and one that I use often), the lernu dictionary can be very frustrating at times because it doesn't distinguish among the meanings of various words. When someone tries to look up an english word that has many possible meanings, the lernu dictionary often lists all of them, with no way to distinguish which one has the particular meaning I desire. While this is a relatively rare occurrence actually, it's happened enough that I've noticed it. So anyway, I'd also be willing to help.

Hi

Thanks to everyone who has already requested translation access; I have given dictionary rights to everyone who requested them. If you requested them and haven't received a personal response from me yet, please let me know and I'll take care of that for you.

Brief instructions for using the dictionary editing system:

If you have translation rights, when you log in to lernu, you should now see a link to "Adminejo" next to "My lernu!" on the top menu bar. Click on that and choose "Vortaroj" from the menu that drops down.

But here's also a direct link for editing the dictionary:
http://en.lernu.net/adminejo/index.php?p=/cgi-bin/...

I think we have a couple different issues with translation of this dictionary. One - to add transitivity information to verbs. Two - I think it would be helpful to add "to" to translations of verbs (so the translation of "ami" would not be "love" but "to love"). Three - simply to increase the number of translations, to increase the size of the dictionary. I think it would be great if we could have people working on each of these three things. Obviously, it should go without saying that all new translations of verbs should contain the word "to", and also transitivity information. This is just my opinion, I'd like to hear other opinions as well.

To edit the English to Esperanto dictionary:
In the drop down menu next to "Aldoni/forigi lingvon", choose English. Next to that, there is an additional drop down menu of dictionaries. The "malgranda vortaro" and the dictionaries for different courses are completely translated into English.

There are two hundred-some untranslated words in the "meza vortaro". And the "tuta vortaro" has a ton of untranslated words.

The dictionary editor has some Esperanto-language instructions on how to search, but I'm going to summarize a few points, so that even beginners will be able to help out. You can use an asterisk (*) in the search field as a joker sign. Therefore, if you search for *, and click on the check box next to "nur netradukitaj", the search result will be a complete list of all untranslated words in the dictionary. If you searched for ab*, you would get all untranslated words that begin with ab (etc). To search for all verbs, search for the term *i. You can use the x-convention in the dictionary, so if you were to type in the word cxaro, the dictionary would correctly understand it as ĉaro.

After you have done your search, a list of results comes up. If you have searched only for untranslated words, you will get a list of Esperanto words, each of which is followed by a grey field with three periods in it. Click on that field to add a translation. A window appears, and that's where you type your translation. Hit enter when you're done typing to save your translation. The window disappears, and the words appear in green. Simply click on the green words if you want to edit it again. Some words have a yellow box with a question mark. That box means the translation has not been checked over and approve. You can look over the the translation, and if it looks good to you, click on the yellow box to approve the translation.

If you are translating a list of words, and you don't know a good translation for a word, you can look for it in a paper dictionary, or in an online dictionary like reta-vortaro.de. Sometimes googling a word can help you come up with a good English translation, especially for rare words unlikely to be found in a dictionary (especially things like Bible names). If you can't or don't want to translate a certain word that comes up, just leave it and someone else will translate it. Be aware that sometimes your translation will have to be a little "creative". For example, I found the word "telera" in the dictionary. (plate-like? plate-related?). You can either come up with a creative & accurate translation, or else just leave it untranslated. When adding new translations, I usually search for a certain alphabetic group. All words that end in af-, for example. It gives you a nice sense of accomplishment to know you've completed something, once you see you've finished all af-words (or whatever.) If you are interested in adding new translations (as opposed to the other tasks I mentioned above, which are also very important), feel free to start anywhere in the dictionary and just start translating. Personally, I would like to see the "meza vortaro" completely translated soon, then we can begin work on the "tuta vortaro".

Thanks again to everyone interested in helping, and I encourage everyone to continue to use this forum for questions and discussions about the work. This is a task that even beginners can make significant contributions to, so don't be shy!

Incidentally, awake, I think you need to remove "komencanto" from your profile's description of your Esperanto!

erinja:Incidentally, awake, I think you need to remove "komencanto" from your profile's description of your Esperanto!

Haha, thanks, I forgot about that. I don't read my own profile very often.

OK, we probably ought to lay down some standards. For example, I think that adding "to" in front of the English verbs, as Erinja mentions, should be one.

The other one I have in mind concerns the adding of transitivity information. Unless someone thinks otherwise, my plan is to follow the Plena Vortaro de Esperanto and use "tr" (for "transitiva") and "ntr" (for "netransitiva") in parentheses following the verbs. Personally I think it logically should be "maltransitiva", but that isn't what the Plena Vortaro uses and I'm happy to follow an established custom.

So instead of "iri", I would put "iri (ntr)". However, one question is: would using simply "t" or "n" be better? I.e., "iri (n)". It's definitely shorter, but is it more understandable (or less, or neither)? What do people think?

Whatever we decide, that should be what we ALL use when updating. Otherwise things might get more confusing for people looking words up rather than less.

RiotNrrd, you practically read my mind, I was just doing some dictionary work and I thought it would be a good idea to set some standards.

The only thought I had regarding transitivity was that normally we see these indicators in Esperanto-only dictionaries. If someone is looking up an English word to get an Esperanto translation, perhaps we should assume that person feels more comfortable with English, and use an English-language indicator of transitivity? That would make it "tr" and "int", or perhaps "tr" and "intr". The other English conventions are v.i. and v.t. These may not be suitable for us since it should be obvious that something is a verb due to the -i ending.

I wouldn't suggest using the (n) convention. The first few times I saw it, I was confused, and it might be a good idea to limit confusion for beginners here!

A second style suggestion - if we have an English word with multiple Esperanto translations, we will need to indicate transitivity of each one. I suggest that we indicate transitivity only once if the transitivities are hte same for all translations, and multiple times if different translations have different transitivities.

For example:

to mix: miksi (tr.); miksiĝi (intr.)

But:
to travel: vojaĝi; veturi (tr.)

Or do you think it should be repeated for each word regardless?

to travel: vojaĝi (tr.); veturi (tr.)

I also think that in the Esperanto to English dictionary we should have some indication of transitivity. Perhaps we should do that only in cases of doubt.

For example, English speakers would easily understand that manĝi = to eat would be transitive.

But for a translation like "rompi", ("to break"), I think that should be labelled as "to break (tr.)", or else through context, like "to break [a thing]".

What does everyone else think?