[om] critique of the notion of phrasebook

[Andrew Solomon]

Thanks Andreas for the historical perspective.
It makes clear that the issues I discuss have been bubbling at the
surface of everyone's consciousness.

To continue my question then, is a phrasebook realizable?
Since, as you say, it isn't really possible
to translate the whole by translating its parts (where are my crystals...)
surely there can be no machine to do the translation which doesn't have
each class of objects explicitly coded for? On the face of it, 
there is an infinite range of very distinct classes.

Andrew




On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 05:12:39AM -0400, Andreas Strotmann wrote:
> Andrew,
> 
> it might be useful here to note the origin of the term "phrasebook", as it
> is intimately connected to your criticism.
> 
> When I went to Bath to work on the Objectives with John Abbott in early
> '95 (I believe), we were looking for a good term to describe something
> like a dictionary, but one that translated phrases rather than words.
> The reason for this was that we recognized that CA systems chunk concepts
> in different ways, and typically context ("phrases") would need to be used
> to determine the specific variant of a concept that might correspond to an
> OpenMath concept in that CA.  A simple example of this would later become
> the OpenMath way of representing definite integration, where most CA
> systems would need to look inside the embedded lambda.
> 
> James Davenport, when asked, suggested the term "phrasebook" as a better
> alternative to "dictionary" during my visit in Bath in 95.
> 
> Thus, the terminology already takes into account the "Hungarian tourist"
> scene;  the part of the OpenMath Standard you quote does not make this as
> clear as it might.  Perhaps the OpenMath Objectives, where this
> terminology first appeared, explained this more thoroughly.
> 
>  -- Andreas
> ____________________________________________________________
> "The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today
> all the exhilaration of a vice." -
> G.K.Chesterton: A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901
>                            www.chesterton.org/acs/quotes.htm
> 
> On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Andrew Solomon wrote:
> 
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I've written a short essay discussing problems with and alternatives
> > to the notion of phrasebook.
> >
> > http://www.illywhacker.net/papers/phrasebook.html
> >
> > I would like to get your reactions.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Andrew
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Simon Fraser University
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