RE: Custom Dictionaries

["Stuart Burnfield" <stuartb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sesm to me this would be a boon (*) for companies that regularly
translate manuals into several languages, especially those that
use Controlled English or Simplified English. These rely on a
restricted vocabulary of general English words, plus one or more
sets of technical or jargon terms. The core terms are translated
once for each target language, providing translators with a
massive head-start for future jobs.

Jay's custom dictionary idea would help authors flag terms that
don't appear in the current standard vocabulary. They would then
have the option of trying to rewrite the phrase using standard
terms, or flagging the text for the attention of the translators.


To extend the idea, I imagine another use would be to have a
dictionary of forbidden terms. Until FrameMaker gets a proper
book-level search-and-replace, this would be a fairly painless
way to find danger words such as superseded product names, terms
marked as 'to be avoided' in the style guide. This reverses the
usual spelling-checker function, from  "flag words not found in
the dictionary" to "flag words that are found in the dictionary".

Possibly translation software supports one or both of these
ideas already -- I'm no expert. Sarah?

Regards
---
Stuart Burnfield
mailto:stuartb@tpg.com.au


(*) Australia's patron saint of phlegm


-----Original Message-----
From: jay@JaySmith.com [mailto:jay@JaySmith.com]
Sent: Friday, 10 March 2000 11:36 AM
To: framers@FrameUsers.com
Subject: Custom Dictionaries


Recently (again) the subject of custom dictionaries has come up.

Early last year I wondered, but was to lazy to pose the question, why
one of the FDK gurus does not MAKE an ALTERNATIVE SPELLING SYSTEM. 
Maybe these things are a lot more complex than I realize -- but I don't
think so, considering some of the other stuff that FDK'ers do.

This approach would permit anybody to build/modify/adapt any existing
dictionary files.  For example, my companies' email systems'
dictionaries and our WordPerfect user-built dictionaries would be
immediately pumped into such a system.


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