WISH Superscriptorium: Latin-English translation program

[pa_mcclamrock]

WISH Superscriptorium 2010 is a simple computer-aided Latin-English translation program, using plain-text grammar and vocabulary data files derived from William Whittaker's "Words" program by way of Mike Polis's "Glossator." Requires Tcl (http://www.pa-mcclamrock.com/tcl-8.5.6-v1.pet) and Tk (http://www.pa-mcclamrock.com/tk-8.5.6.pet). Available for download from Pa Penguin's Icebox (http://www.pa-mcclamrock.com/papenguins ... superscrip).

The main program window consists basically of three independently scrolling text widgets side by side, with the headings "ORIGINAL TEXT," "TRANSLATION OPTIONS," and "TRANSLATION," below some menus and mini-toolbar buttons. Latin words can be inserted into the "ORIGINAL TEXT" box by typing, pasting, or opening a file. When the user clicks on a word, here's basically what will happen:

1. The word will appear with a green background in the "TRANSLATION OPTIONS" window, with a dot between what appears to be the root, stem, or base of the word and the grammatically significant suffix (if any). Also in the green background will be what part of speech the word appears to be, together with abbreviations for things such as the gender of nouns and adjectives (M, F, N for masculine, feminine, neuter), declension of nouns and adjectives (e.g., D1 for first declension), conjugation of verbs (e.g., C2 for second conjugation), case taken by preposition (e.g., "w/Acc" means the preposition takes the accusative case, "w/Abl" means it takes the ablative). If the word has more than one definition or more than one possible grammatical analysis, it will be repeated for each.

2. A brief definition of the word (not necessarily specific to the grammatical function of the word being analyzed) will appear with a yellow background.

3. The infamous "duplicitates Latinae" (i.e., confusingly duplicitous or multiplicitous word endings, and uses of the same ending to serve more than one grammatical purpose in Latin) will be conquered, or at least set forth so a user with some rudimentary knowledge of Latin can conquer them, with human-readable abbreviations for the number and case of each grammatical possibility.

After that, if desired, the user can use the "TRANSLATION" box for anything from a rough scratch pad filled with bad guesses about the meaning of sentences, to a real "super-scriptorium" displaying an elegant, polished translation (if the user knows how to produce one).

[prehistoric]

While the TCL and TK pets are there, the link for superscriptorium is missing a period in front of the pet.

I know what you mean about "duplicitates Latinae". The language was very useful for duplicity, probably by design.

[pa_mcclamrock]

While the TCL and TK pets are there, the link for superscriptorium is missing a period in front of the pet.

Ugh, you're right--or you were right. I just fixed it; try again.

I know what you mean about "duplicitates Latinae". The language was very useful for duplicity, probably by design.

To form an opinion about that, I would have to know a whole lot more than I do about the original designer or designers of Latin grammar! Right now, I would just note that Latin grammatical duplicity, i.e., the use of the same word ending to perform more than one grammatical function, is not necessarily well suited to "duplicity" in the sense of deception--although it might be so, in some instances.

[8-bit]

My wife has a friend in San Salvador that sends her email that she cannot read.
I tried your program on part of an email message, but it only hit on a few of the words.
So I assume that this is a limited translator.

[pa_mcclamrock]

My wife has a friend in San Salvador that sends her email that she cannot read.
I tried your program on part of an email message, but it only hit on a few of the words.
So I assume that this is a limited translator.

Um, well, yes, it's limited to Latin; it doesn't do Spanish. It does do pretty well with the great majority of Latin words I've tried. Don't give me a lot of credit for that, though; most of the hard work was done by William Whittaker in creating the grammar and vocabulary data files for his "Words" program. I just fudged up a Tcl/Tk GUI and some procedures to make the grammatical analysis more comprehensible (I hope).