Bug 165807

Summary:	Wiktionary Integration for Completion, Automatic Translation, Checking Correctness
Product:	[Applications] parley	Reporter:	Eike Welk <eike.welk>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Parley Developers <parley-devel>
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	avgoustinos.kadis
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Eike Welk 2008-07-05 19:16:55 UTC

Version: (using KDE 4.0.5)
Installed from: Unspecified0

Wiktionary is a big multilingual online dictionary. At least the German, English and Turkish versions contain many tranlations. The structure of Wiktionary entries is very formalized, so that they could be interpreted by a computer program.

http://www.wiktionary.org/

- Wiktionary could be queried to construct a word list for auto-completion. Some languages (English, Turkish) offer word completions in their search fields, so there must be an API for that.

- The translations in Wiktionary could be used for automatic translations of entries in Parley. This would save much typing. You would have to type the word only in one language, Parley would query Wiktionary to fill in the other languages.

- Automatically fill in the grammar details. Filling in grammar details is a lot of work, and it is quite error prone for students (like me). Wiktionary contains some basic information like 'noun'.

- Compare the entries in Parley with those in Wiktionary. Highlight the differences. This facility could serve several purposes:
-- Check correctness of translations.
-- Serve as spell checker for exotic languages.
-- Spot missing entries in Wiktionary.

- Change entries in Wiktionary. The very formalized nature of Wiktionary makes it difficult and intimidating to edit it. A computer program is very good at obeying strict rules. A facility to change Wiktionary entries from Parley would lower the barrier to colaborate on Wiktionary.

- Accessing Wiktionary from Parley would make Wiktionary more known, and it would show the benefits of freely reusable information.

Comment 1 Avgoustinos Kadis 2008-09-14 10:41:32 UTC

I've contacted Wiktionary Information Team and they gave me a link to their public API (http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php)! They told me we can have a copy of the Wiktionary database for faster lookups and less traffic on their side.

I'm looking now how do the conjugations work there (there is a special way of writing them in each language) and see how it can work.

From a first look on the API it seems we can also edit the online documents, so the collaboration you are suggesting might be possible.

Thx for the ideas :)

Comment 2 Eike Welk 2008-09-18 16:29:53 UTC

Ah, how great that you really work on my wish!