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superstrijder15

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Posts posted by superstrijder15

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    1 hour ago, KSK said:

    Looking at the output from your translator, I think it's getting its strings in a twist somewhere over bal which seems to be translating as 'cut'

    Yeah, it is. I think at the time that we were just starting verbs I wrote it in the dictionary as the word for 'to cut', which now turns out to be incorrect. Such is the work of a linguist deciphering an alien lanuage I suppose XD. And this is a pretty simple one at that, mad respect for people actually deciphering actual ancient texts.

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted · Edited by superstrijder15

    17 minutes ago, LordOfTheNorth said:

    Indeed I did, you've basically got a whole section dedicated to your dictionary (hope between KSK and me we managed to do it justice).

    Ah, I read over the first line of that section. It is quite a bit more elaborate than my dictionary so I thought those were KSK's own notes on it. I think some stuff like the numbers never came up before...

     

    Maybe I should go to bed now...

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted · Edited by superstrijder15

    This is gonna be a long one folks, a lot of translating and commenting on my reading:

    Spoiler

     

    Quote

    Kermbal minsathona

     

    From chapter 110. Throwing this through my translation program returns 

    Quote

    -<Kermbal>;--smallest-deed-dependence on(negated)-(plural);

    The translator bailed to spot the suffix bal, since Kerm isn't in the dictionary (I should put it in to be honest), and after that this can be simplified or made more readable into something like "I cut Kerms, whose small deeds we do not depend on!". A very nicely crafted insult!

     

    I love how you crafted the secondary schools full boarding period with the worldbuilding around Kerm trees so nicely!

    For what soundnfury brought up about whether prefixes or suffixes are stronger: In my software prefixes are stronger (and if something is a noun and a verb it is interpreted as a verb. The full order is verb, prefix, noun, suffix basically because that is the order I wrote the code in), if I do things by hand I look at multiple interpretations and work things out by context.

     

    Quote

    Bin balsoathada

    and here we see that preference become a problem in my program, which assumes bal means 'to cut' here, not 'a thing that accomplishes'. When I temporarily take bal out of the verb list soathada is also still completely ununderstandable, because the verb for flight is hidden inside there somewhere. Picking it apart myself, I can turn it into bal-so-ath-ad-a, which translates to 'ways to accomplish-soath-inhabitant of-(plural)'. Soath may be the complete verb for 'to fly', or a misspelling of sath (deed), but in the later case the meaning would not line up with the stated translation (the things we use to fly'). I also cannot make my own word for it since I lack words for fly and for thing.

    Edit: My other document does have soath, but I had not copied it. Stupid me! The noun list also has things like beast. I guess I didn't update the code after the poem that was my last post.

    I also just realized I should cast my entire string to lower before doing stuff so string matching will actually function right...

     

    Quote

    "Bob - factr balsoathada. Wernher dja Bill? Binda ara."

    "Dja Jeb?"

    "Jeb? Jeb soathr balsoathada."

    well, you introduced factr, to build, and ara, them. I think that might be the first of the ... I actually don't know what word type it is, but it fits in with I and him and such. With a bit of tweaking (and the now known mistranslation of airplane) we get the horrible 

    Quote 
    

-<bob>;--to build(he/she/it);--to cut(I)-to fly(we)-(plural)-<.>;-<wernher>;--and;-<bill>;-<?>;--to understand(they);--them;-<.>;
--and;-<jeb>;-<?>;-<jeb>;-<?>;
-<jeb>;--to fly(he/she/it);--to cut(I)-to fly(we)-(plural);-<.>;

    My code doesn't understand punctionation so I have seperate them into seperate words which are then considered untranslatable. For the reader who doesn't want to read that here it is with those taking down a bit:

    Quote 
    

-<bob>;--to build(he/she/it);--to cut(I)-to fly(we)-(plural). -<wernher>;--and;-<bill>? --to understand(they);--them.
--and;-<jeb>?
-<jeb>? -<jeb>;--to fly(he/she/it);--to cut(I)-to fly(we)-(plural).
    Quote

    Almkerm

    hmm, a new prefix in a new name?

    Thank you so, so much for writing this all @KSK, I very much enjoyed reading it. Perhaps I should sub your new fictions on spacebattles, I haven't been on there in ages.

     

    and I ran out of likes before catching up, as is tradition.

     

    EDIT: @LordOfTheNorth The full download had a bit of weirdness going on with the index/contents list, having the parts 1, two, three and three. 

    EDIT 2: 

    Quote

    * Unknown how prefixes with long translation of which different parts can be inverted react, use cautiously, or use on purpose to be ambiguous

    Hey, you took that from my dictionary! (Although now obsolete, it is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r0eDcf2dWf6_HwHZTgiDGwFXxOZ7Qxv-LyD2Jgpj8u0/edit)

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted · Edited by superstrijder15

    Ah nooo! somehow I stopped recieving mail updates! Well, guess I need to read the finishing chapters now... I'm sorry for making anyone who was looking for them wait for translations guys, will be there shortly

     

    EDIT: It seems I wasn't the only one with this problem, @mstachowsky had it too. I wonder how many people suddenly dissapeared because of that...

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted · Edited by superstrijder15

    On 11/24/2019 at 6:29 PM, KSK said:

    Pilla! Manaliant soathraban!
    Onkerbal djaldaban mahomr
    dja orbdaban manaliant Leviathan

    Truth! A great beast took flight!
    All the people watched it go.
    And they named the beast Leviathan.

    Interesting...

    As we have seen before, proper nouns are typically the same in Old Kerba and in modern English. However in earlier cases as far as I remember they were always words that seemed to have started as Old Kerba and kept as a name. However Leviathan is very, very different from any other word in Old Kerba so far, so it must be from later. 

     

    Of course this instantly gives us new vocabulary:

    Pilla: Thruth

    Manaliant: great beast. man- indicates 'biggest', aliant seems to be a proper noun for beast

    soathraban: -aban means past tense, -r means he, soath would logically by flight/to fly

    djaldaban: -aban indicates past tense, djald remains, seemingly first person singular, or it could be avoiding aa and be They instead, which makes more sense

    mahomr: it go. -r denotes 3rd person singular, mahom seems root of verb 'to go'

    dja: and (suprised we didn't need it so far)

    orbdaban: this convinces me the -daban is for 3rd plural past time. Root verb orb meaning 'to name'

    Manaliant occurs again, but this time the translation leaves out the greatness of the beast. This shows the translation is not exactly literal.

     

    We now have one word left:

    onkerbal

    This word is annoying. I seem to have misplaced the -al suffix, but even if we just use kerbal as a species name, like human, it still doesn't make sense. on- is for dependance on. Thus onkerbal ought to be 'dependance on the kerbals', while the stated translation is 'All the people' or plausibly 'All the kerbals'. We do not at this moment seem to have an 'all' classifier or a way to make one, but if I needed a word, at this point in the story, to describe all kerbals, I'd go with 'Kerbinada': Inhabitants of Kerbin.

    There are only two possible answers to this pressing question: What happened with this translation?

    1. We are dealing with an unrealiable narrator

    2. 

    Spoiler

    Image result for the archives are incomplete

    There is something I'm missing

     

    Edit: Oh, let me not forget to plug my terrible amazing Old Kerba dictionary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r0eDcf2dWf6_HwHZTgiDGwFXxOZ7Qxv-LyD2Jgpj8u0

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    3 hours ago, bigyihsuan said:

    Heya, I'm reading through this (currently on 41: Training Days), and I've made a Tvtropes page here. It really needs filling, since it's based off of what I've read so far.

    Warning! This post contains a TvTropes link. Proceed at your own risk, preferably when you don't have anything to do for the rest of the day.

     

    I caught up yesterday and removed the 'new post' mails from my 'Story Update' folder. Those were literally half the mails in my story update folder! I should come here more often.

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted · Edited by superstrijder15
    no doubleposts

    I got likes from LordOfTheNorth too! Already pretty far in he is, I'm interested in what he'll think by the end of it

     

    EDIT: This like has now taken me back to the era of when I first commented in this thread, and you mention Fire in the Sky, which made me think of this song:

    Spoiler

     

     

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    Ooh, the Kerm will get to talk to another? I'm very interested to see if they can think of a faster communication protocol after they telegrammed with each other for a while, I think for a Kerm there must be a more efficient way to compress information than English New Kerba telegram by morse code

    Forgotten Space Program

    in KSP1 Mission Reports

    Posted

    So I forgot whether this was maybe already mentioned once, but copper is very, very straight. It looks suspiciously like you could attach an engine module on the front and pull the entire thing around the system. Is it going to be a huge mothership for some far mission?

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    2 hours ago, AviosAdku said:

    if I understood the linguistics discussion correctly, seeing that makes me realise how little I understand this field

    Don't think I do understand anything! 

    13 hours ago, KSK said:

    Hmmm. I know next to nothing about coding so have no feel for how feasible this is, but it might be easier to use the standard definitions of verb and noun, locate those in the sentence, and then treat everything else as a modifier that can be applied to either or both of those categories? 

    I could try to find the verb and noun first, but that would require a completly different approach from what I have now. Let my try to explain what my program does:

    I take the input string, cut it into words at the spaces(1), then try to parse each word. With each word, I start by comparing its beginning to each verb root(2). If I find the right one, I take out the root and add it to output, then see if the next fits any of the verb endings, and add its translation to the output as well(3). Then it does step (2) with nouns again, and then it tries to find prefixes and suffixes. The program also saves whether we already found a verb or noun in this word, for purposes of negation of pre and suffixes. Using this and the technique from (2), the system then tries to find any prefixes. All these steps are repeated until after a full attempt there is no change, then the remainder is put into output is tagged as untranslatable and we continue to the next word(4).

    for example: "Jebediah ebad belonmansatha"

    (1) ["Jebediah", "ebad", "belonmansatha"]

    (2) "akhat" == "ebad" -> False. "akh" == "eba" -> False. ... "eb" == "eb" -> True: output = output + "to be"

    (3) "da" == "ad" -> False. ... "ad" == "ad" -> True: output = output + "(we)" 

    (4) we tried everything on "Jebediah", but nothing worked. So output = output + "<Jebediah>"

     

    It could also be possible to write a program that tries to fit those nouns and verbs to each bit of a word, but that would require making a thing with nouns only instead of 'everything nounlike'. Let's see if I can get that working...

    10 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

    @KSK What are the rules regarding adjectives and adverbs in Old Kerba? Actually, do we have a complete description of the grammar of Old Kerba lying around somewhere? I ask because I'm interested in determining if Old Kerba can be described using a context-free grammar (which would imply all kinds of things about how easy or otherwise it is to parse by machine).

    You seem to know more about this. Do you know how languages are usually parsed by computers?

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    Aah, my division might be a bit different than that of a proper linguist. For my program, a verb is something that is conjugated via the standard conjugation scheme(s), a root which has a number of possible endings which carry slightly different meanings in a standardized way. A prefix or suffix is something that can typically only exist attached to a root word, whether verb or noun, it is the equivalent of the adjectives in English. A noun is a catch-all for stuff that can occur as the root of a word but isn't conjugatable.

    In this scheme, things that cannot stand on their own would typically be a prefix, but then again they can apparently also be conjugated so they are a verb. Annoying things these.

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    -<Jebediah> --to be(I) --accomplisher of-<ad> --dependence on-biggest-deed or task-(plural)

    It interprets bel as a noun, because it isn't in the database as a verb. After adding it as 'to accomplish', I got this: 

    -<Jebediah> --to be(I) --to accomplish(we) --dependence on-biggest-deed or task-(plural)

     

    The translations aren't even near google translate in 2015 levels yet, but I think it looks at lot at the way writers write the way a new translater still learning a language would talk, which is nice too.

    And indeed, this is all fresh from my google docs document, which has a tiny issue of not being updated with things you updated in chapters, and missing information if I didn't copy everything diligently.

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    Alright guys, I think my code works. Now I need to test it for further errors or stuff that the database misses (and maybe make the output sound more like English). For example I think that I miss quite a few words in "Erbabar-beldaonerba ebda berot pilla", since it comes out as "-<Erbabar> --accomplisher of-<daonerba> --to be(they) -<berot> -<pilla>"

    Also, here is the translation of "Jebediah ebad belonmansatha:": "-<Jebediah> --to be(we) --accomplisher of-dependence on-biggest-deed or task-(plural)". Pretty close to the "Jebediah, we are the persons on which the biggest actions depend" that was meant, right?

     

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted · Edited by superstrijder15

    1 hour ago, KSK said:

    I'll be very curious to see that program in action!

    Don't get too excited! By now I have:

    * Loaded my current lists into python dictionaries. My original format was pretty inconsistent so I had to write a converter. The converter has built-in warning messages though!

    * Seperated the input into words. It seperates at each space, hypen, newline and tab character.

    * An attempt at translating individual words, starting by trying out all pronouns until none fit, then trying out all nouns and verbs (it even find the right person), then continuing to try all suffixes until none fit.

     

    This procedure isn't perfect, as your mention of Boladakhat demonstrates: The output comes out as  

    -place of accomplishing-<adakhat>

    It gets stuck when there is a suffix in the middle (or possibly Bol is used as a verb here, but since it already took that as a noun it doesn't even look, and it isn't in my file)

     

    Edit: the <> means that this part was untranslatable

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    1 hour ago, KSK said:

    abrath af kerbal akhad.”

    Alright, let's go. (Yes, the answer is right below it, but who cares):

    Spoiler

    Cutting this up we have:

    Abrath: Abrathal, the I version. I would

    af: as KSK said shortly ago, this means *any*

    akhad: akh-ad. ad means inhabitant of, akh (or even just ak) is not in my database, but seems to carry the meaning of 'trade places' or maybe switch. -ad is also used for we, so it could also be something like 'we switch'.

     

    We also still need a negation somewhere, since this is 'I would any kerbal inhabitant of...(not trade with?)'

    BTW I've done a bit more coding now and I feel like making a program that attempts to interpret Old Kerba. It'll be pretty naive at the start, but good practice on coding weird things.

    First Flight (Epilogue and Last Thoughts)

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    On 4/8/2019 at 10:48 PM, KSK said:

    af   -   any (prefix form) or no (suffix form)
    afa -   many (prefix form) or none (suffix form)

    As always, this was added to my document*, togehter with the new verbs. But a nice note: I was worried for a moment that 'multiple af' and 'afa' would be indistinguishable. Then I noticed that the multiple of any (at least 1) is actually many/multiple. So it actually works!

     

    *https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r0eDcf2dWf6_HwHZTgiDGwFXxOZ7Qxv-LyD2Jgpj8u0/edit?usp=sharing

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