austraLasia #908
Don Bosco's spirit top of the chart: language
science reveals 'our' language
ROME: 16th October '04 -- Don
Bosco's spirit. In the course of the past century, the
most frequent phrase to cross Salesian lips! Closely followed by
Don Bosco's charism, Salesians of Don Bosco, love of God
for the young, our rule of life, project of life.
All natural human languages have a
distinctive feature - words 'keep company' with other words. If we have a
representative set of texts belonging to a language, it is possible, with the
right software, to identify precisely which words keep company with which other
words. These clusters often comprise three words and as many as five or
six. Beyond that number, clusters are not well-defined. In almost
every case, a defined cluster would have an invariable meaning in any
context.
It does not take much to realise that these
facts could be of inestimable value for several purposes: (1) given the right
conditions, a translator can use one or two actions to replace a string
containing anything up to 50 key strokes depending on the size of the words
involved; (2) the most frequent clusters in the entire corpus will almost
certainly identify the most important topics, in terms of regular use, for that
language.
Without arguing the point about it too
much, Salesian 'talk' can be regarded as a language. It has a range of
some 600-700 distinctive terms (isolated thus far) and hence also a range of
combinations or clusters of those terms with other words or amongst each
other. A glossary of approximately 100 of the most
frequent Salesian clusters now exists and is available for anyone who
would like it. As with glosdben (which is mostly but not entirely
single words) it is arranged alphabetically, not in order of importance.
All clusters listed have appeared in
at least 80% of the total corpus of 227 official Salesian texts
beginning from Don Bosco himself. Each cluster contains a word that
has appeared at least 1,800 times in that corpus and as often as 9,000
times. Each cluster has appeared a minimum of 10 times and as often as 221
times in that corpus.
Clusdben, as it is termed, is of
interest partly because it is not random, and represents the kind of company
Salesian terms keep and have kept over 150 years. It can be downloaded
quickly from www.sdb.org reserved area | file sharing.
If people were seriously interested in letting it work automatically within
MSWord for translation purposes, then they need only do two things: (1) strip
the table format back to simple tab-separated format and save the entire file as
*.txt (all that can be done within Word, Tables). (2) download Wordfast for free
from www.wordfast.net and follow directions for installing it and
using it, along with the handy manual that can be downloaded. It will make
automatic use of your clusdben.txt. Wordfast can be used free for jobs up
to 500 translation units (usually a TU is a sentence worth) which would do
most people.
____________________________
'austraLasia' is
an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia-Pacific. It functions
also as an agency for ANS, based in Rome. Try also www.bosconet.aust.com Did you
know that the POLARIS project is a Salesian-driven project? For
further comment cf Lexisdb
austraLasia 907
A handy glossary - and practice at using the Reserved
Area of the SDB Website
ROME: 15th October '04 -- As the Rector Major has been
travelling for the past 24 hours to reach Australia, and after a few hours of
rest has now joined the Provincial Council for its regular monthly meeting,
there is little to report at present. Tomorrow he takes part in the
Rectors' meeting where he will offer his thoughts on topics such as experience
of God and the Salesian vocation, spirituality and holiness.
In the meantime, here is an opportunity to offer something that may
prove to be very handy for the reader - a simple two-column glossary
of Salesian words and phrases (Italian-English) that you can consult.
While it is obviously useful for anyone doing translation, it may be of use for
any Salesian who wants to check the meaning of a term that is in common Salesian
use. It could be helpful for novices or postnovices in their Salesian
Studies courses. It is one of the practical products stemming from the
development of Lexisdb.
The glossary is a Word document, entitled
glosdben.doc (glossary sdb English). Here is your chance, if you
have not already made use of it, to go into the Reserved Area of the site, where
a space is available to all Salesians for file sharing. If you have
not as yet registered with the site, do so (follow directions on the Home Page
of
www.sdb.org ) - it will not take you long, and the
response will be quick. Once registered, simply enter the reserved area,
file sharing and download the file which will be immediately apparent to
you.
Once you have your copy of glosdben, it's there
to use as you wish. If you are looking for a term and do not find it
there, please advise. The file will be updated whenever additions are
made.
_______________________________
'austraLasia' is
an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia-Pacific. It functions
also as an agency for ANS, based in Rome. Try also www.bosconet.aust.com Did you know that the House
chronicle is something Don Bosco himself began? For
further comment cf Lexisdb 
