simple Wikipedia

[gusl]

The language that most people can speak finally has a Wikipedia. This language...

... is not English
... is not Chinese
... is not Spanish

it's bad English. Well, no, actually the Wikipedia is in Simple English.

Reading it a little, it seems like the Simple Wikipedia has articles written for 12-year-old fluent English speakers... or your average American adult. (the average publication is more complex than that because of a selection effect: since most things that get written are targeted at people who read. People who don't read much don't have many publications targeted at them.)

---

I have been enjoying teaching my housemate tricks about English pronunciation (like "-ate" is [ejt] when a verb and [/\t] when a noun). His main problem is that he pronounces words as they are written.

Solution: read less! No, actually, we could print English words in a grey-and-black combination, like "worold".

Someone should publish books to help people correct systematic mistakes. I think I've seen one such book in Brazil, for Brazilians learning English.

I could be improving my Spanish instead, if we spoke Spanish at the apartment, but I think that having to switch between 3 languages in everyday life is already enough for me. I keep Spanish strictly for the purposes of fun.

Comments

what next...Newspeak?

[metaeducat10n.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing a demonstration which would let you just turn a dial and a piece of natural language software would increase or decrease the reading level of a piece of text. As the reading level went down the number of words went up. I wonder what it would do to the Bogdanov Papers?

Though I know people like to go on about how machine translation isn't ready yet, developing all these multiple language editions of Wikipedia does not seem very forward-looking. While we're waiting for perfect AI, can't people keep tweaking the input to a machine translation process until it produces the desired output? If a sentence (or part of a sentence) proves inpenetrable to the machine, give it a hint and then leave that hint (invisible) in the article. The more hints you have, the better the translation should be able to get--even in languages that aren't explicitly mentioned in the hint structure.

Oh well, Wikipedia isn't the next generation web...it's another hack like HTML was which shows the power of an idea (no matter how simply you implement it). Thinking about it a lot lately.

Re: what next...Newspeak?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Though I know people like to go on about how machine translation isn't ready yet, developing all these multiple language editions of Wikipedia does not seem very forward-looking. While we're waiting for perfect AI, can't people keep tweaking the input to a machine translation process until it produces the desired output? If a sentence (or part of a sentence) proves inpenetrable to the machine, give it a hint and then leave that hint (invisible) in the article. The more hints you have, the better the translation should be able to get--even in languages that aren't explicitly mentioned in the hint structure.

I've long defended putting a greater burden on writers and editors, for them to write richer semantic text.


Btw, I've been reading Wally and the Walnuts. It's really great. I sent the link to Ken Schoolland, the author of "Jonathan Gullible", which is a similar work with strong libertarian leanings.

Re: what next...Newspeak?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

In a way, it's like the opposite of NLP (natural language processing): instead of teaching the computer to understand humans, we teach humans to make themselves understandable by computers.

This reminds me of the neat idea of "programming by answering questions": how smart does the computer need to be in order to cope with human dumbness?

Re: what next...Newspeak?

[metaeducat10n.livejournal.com]

Well put. I've done some more updates of my user info. Trying to reflect this and other ideas; would enjoy your edits on the project ideas.

Re: what next...Newspeak?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I wanted to edit Wally & The Walnuts a couple days ago, but couldn't. I'm a happy user of WikiSpaces.org, and would recommend you move Wally there.

Where is this Wiki that you'd like me to edit?

[rdore.livejournal.com]

I think that this is quite a good idea. But I'm curious if enough people will actually contribute to it to make it work.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

which idea?

[rdore.livejournal.com]

The idea of having a wikipedia written in simple english.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

what the hell kind of modal logic is that??
Frames where each world points to itself and nowhere else support <>P -> []P.

[rdore.livejournal.com]

The point is it is about the best possible translation to symbols of "Everything not impossible is mandatory."

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

oh, and who believes that? under which interpretation?
Or is this a joke on authoritarianism?