Automatically generating Hebrew transliteration

Colin, I agree we can't get back to vocalised Hebrew, and that we don't need to.
But we should aim to get back to the letters.

My method for getting the "oohs" and "aahs" of Qames is a cheat
- I will check it against an already-transliterated text (or ask the computer to do so).
The number of lexical entries which use Qames hatuph is tiny.

David IB

At 12:38 18/11/2009, Tyndale STEP Project wrote:

This is largely independent of what transliteration scheme we choose, so
broken it off into a separate thread.


David IB wrote:
> You also made the very important point that it must be possible to
> automatically generate
> this transliteration from Hebrew and back to Hebrew again.
> I think this is possible, with a couple of caveats:

Just for clarity, I don't think we'll be able to get back to the Hebrew,
but won't need to either. As well as dageshes, we're going to lose some
vowel distinctions (shewa-based vowels notably).

> First automatic generation won't distinguish between /qames/ and /qames
> hatuph
> /(ie when does the T-shaped vowel sound like an "a" and when does it
> sound like an "o")
> I don't think I can come up with an algorithm which will do this
> automatically.
> We have two choices:
> 1) ignore it and simply use "a" (which is fine in the vast majority of
> cases)
> 2) generate a whole OT text with correct "a" and "o" (I can do that) and
> manually change the half-dozen or so lexical entries which need it

I think we do want the o if at all possible. Sounds like you've got a
method which does the hard bit of working out which qamats in the text
is which!

Colin

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Posted By Tyndale STEP Project to Tyndale STEP - Programming on 11/18/2009 04:37:00 AM