Re: Hi, I'm new to ADA

["James S. Rogers" <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

"Paul Gregory" <pg16@bton.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3E43DF55.DC92A8E8@bton.ac.uk...
> I'm a complete novice as all you guys once were in terms of ADA and I've
>
> been given a small school project to do. I'm sure as a novice you
> experienced many frustrations and difficulties along the way !
>
> As you people are probably the best people to ask I was wondering if any
> of you could give me any tips as to how
> to go about the following:
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> The task
>
> You are invited to design and implement a translation program which will
>
> take an English sentence and translate it into French (and optionally
> translate from French
> to English).
>
> Your program will use a simple dictionary containing the following
> words:
>
>                                                        English
>                                                               French
>                                                        big
>                                                               grand
>                                                        black
>                                                               noir
>                                                        cat
>                                                               chat
>                                                        dog
>                                                               chien
>                                                        is
>                                                               est
>                                                        small
>                                                               petit
>                                                        the
>                                                               le
>                                                        white
>                                                               blanc
>
>
> Example 1
>
> Do you wish to add words to the dictionary?: N
>
> Please enter a sentence:
> The cat is white.
>
> The French translation of your sentence is:
> Le chat est blanc.
>
> Example 2
>
> Do you wish to add words to the dictionary?: N
>
> Please enter a sentence:
> The cat is dead.
>
> I cannot translate that sentence.
>
> Example 3
>
> Do you wish to add words to the dictionary?: Y
> English word: horse
> Equivalent French word: cheval
>
> Do you wish to add more words?: N
>
> Please enter a sentence:
> Le cheval est grand.
>
> The English translation of your sentence is:
> The horse is big.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>
> ----------------------------------------
> I know you all have far more important things to be getting on with but
> any
> advice would be brilliant !

It appears from your description that you are translating the
words, not the entire language syntax. This can be important to
because it helps define the complexity of your assignment.
A translation of words only will involve a simple look-up and
substitution of words. A translation of syntax will account for
different word order, or contextual evaluation of phrases which
lead to different idiomatic expressions.

You need to think about how to design a two-way look up table
of words. You also need to think about how you will identify
the language of the input sentence so that you will perform the
correct translation. This can be complicated by the fact that
English contains some French words, and modern French
contains some English words.

Jim Rogers