Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

Very good observation.
The software is still in phase of architecture. And as you can imagine this 
is the
most important stage. 
The basic plan to address this issue is this.

a)Construct the base language of translation
b)Develop and test the software with all major living languages especially 
those
related to Hebrew
c)Match up common phrases in Hebrew with common phrases in living languages 
by 
means of frequency and usage analysis algorithms

This is, of course an over simplification.
The most important factor is the base language. The major mistake in the past 
has 
been to use English as the base language. This imposes many Anglicisms on 
translations
into other languages.
The philosophy behind the mechanisms is that the base language will be 
concepts and not
words in any modern language. The reason I have decided this is the way 
forward is 
because of one simple observation: When children learn their first language 
they relate 
new words to concepts and so a high level of fluency is achieved. When an 
adult learns 
a second language they start by relating words to other words in their first 
language, 
which are in turn related to concepts, which is the true basepoint of all 
languages, 
whether verbal or visual or sensual (i.e. braille). The adult experiences 
problems with 
communication not because the wrong concepts came to mind but because he has 
related the 
words of the TL incorrectly to the concepts via the *corrupt* path of words 
in the FL.
After years of trial and error, the adult may or may not gain flunecy in the 
TL by eventually 
relating the words of the TL *directly* to the concepts, which are the 
basepoint of all 
expression and the only language that we all have in common.

I don't know if that was followable. I tried to keep it as simple as 
possible. Let 
me know if there's something I didn't explain well.


-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Heard, Christopher
Sent: Fri 7/29/2005 8:12 PM
To: b-hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Machine translation of the Bible,was:  heno- v's 
poly- theismin the torah
 
James,

How does the fact that biblical Hebrew has a very limited corpus and  
can no longer (if it ever could have been) be observed in daily use  
affect the project? Your "childlike" AI will not be able to observe  
real speakers of biblical Hebrew as it could, for example, observe  
real use of modern Japanese or French. It seems to me that even if  
your AI engine is solid and all your language acquisition models are  
spot-on, these pragmatic limitations will hamper the program's  
learning ability. How have you addressed these issues?

Thanks,

Chris

On Jul 29, 2005, at 11:42 AM, Read, James C wrote:

>
> The major reason for their failings is the presupposition that our
> division and definition of words is correct. Current translating
> programs are largely literally based and for this reason they produce
> such poor translations.
>
> I agree that the project is complex but I have full faith in its  
> possibility.
> The very fact that children can learn a language without having to  
> depend on
> translations shows that the algorithms exist and the program will  
> just as much
> a pyscholgical one as a linguistic one.
>
> The secret is in finding the algorithms which I believe lie more  
> the minds of
> children than in the prowess of 'scholars'.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peterkirk AT qaya.org]
> Sent: Fri 7/29/2005 5:54 PM
> To: Read, James C
> Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Machine translation of the Bible, was: [b-hebrew] heno-  
> v's poly- theismin the torah
>
> On 29/07/2005 16:39, Read, James C wrote:
>
>
>> ...
>> In fact, I firmly believe that grammar is more of a hindrance
>> than a help to learning a language and I intend to demonstrate
>> this with my AI project.
>> The purpose of my project is to develop algorithms which analyse
>> any input of language. The alphabet it will use will be based
>> on phonemes and not the inadequate arrays of alphabets that
>> modern languages use.
>> The algorithms will completely avoid grammar and rely entirely
>> on examples and contexts to learn the meanings of words (a word
>> is a series of sounds/phonemes and may not necessarily agree with
>> the classical division of words we are accustomed to).
>> It is my aim that this tool will produce a translation of the
>> hebrew bible, which is completely devoid of doctrinal influences,
>> as a demonstration that the natural way of learning languages
>> is the superior one. It's a big project and the algorithms have
>> many challenges but I am benefitting from the thoughts posted
>> in the various threads.
>>
>>
>>
>>
> James, I wish your project well, but I am not very hopeful for you.
>
> After all, researchers have been working on machine translation  
> between
> major world languages for many decades, and the best results that they
> can come up with are appalling. For example, a few years ago I used
> Babelfish to translate Psalm 23:1 from English to Chinese to  
> English and
> from German to English, and in both cases got the result "The Lord is
> not my shepherd"! (The "not" was wrongly transferred from the second
> clause.) And even when used on actual web pages the results were
> frequently incomprehensible.
>
> To come up with a useable Bible translation from Hebrew you will  
> have to
> do very much better than such programs can do even from German. And  
> yet
> the only way you can do this in a way which "is completely devoid of
> doctrinal influences" (a laudable aim, although I don't think an
> achievable one) is to avoid "teaching" the program with ANY
> human-generated translations of Bible passages. But then, as I
> understand it (although I am not at all an expert), the only way that
> the current generation of machine translators can make any real  
> progress
> is by matching to patterns found in real examples of human-generated
> translation. So you will need to find a new approach here.
>
> Sorry to be discouraging. I fear that your aim is unattainable. But I
> hope that it is not.
>
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
>
>
>
> -- 
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--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info
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On Jul 29, 2005, at 12:13 PM, Dave Washburn wrote:

> On Friday 29 July 2005 13:04, Heard, Christopher wrote:

>> On Jul 29, 2005, at 11:30 AM, Sujata wrote:

>>> Outside the Torah, it is referred to as Torah Moshe in
>>> 1 Kings 2:3, Neh 8:1, 2 Chr 25:4, etc.

>> What is the evidence to show that these references are to the
canonical
>> Torah?

> What alternative interpretation can you offer?


Well, the burden of proof ought to be borne by those making the claim.
The question "What's your alternative?" is not evidence in favor of the
claim. It needs to be *demonstrated*, not *assumed*, that references to
"the law of Moses" in the Former Prophets, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles
refer to the canonical Torah. I know of no such demonstration; certainly
none has even been attempted in the present thread.

As for alternative interpretations, I would note the following:

(1) Please cross-reference my lost post on this thread earlier today,
where I discuss the "book of the law of Moses" as referenced in Joshua
8. There is no warrant for interpreting that phrase with reference to
the entire canonical Torah, and good reasons, given in that other post,
for thinking it must refer to a much smaller text. *Perhaps* a Mosaic
core of Deuteronomy is a possibility there, but even that seems rather
long for the occasion. I would imagine that the narrator has in mind
some subset of Deuteronomy.

(2) In the case of 1 Kings 22-23, that "book of the law of Moses" the
majority view is that this book was some form of the core of the book of
Deuteronomy, though probably not the canonical form of Deuteronomy. This
view may or may not be right, but I think it does have much to commend
it, as the narrative goes on to depict Josiah's religious reforms (or
innovations, depending on your point of view) in very Deuteronomistic
terms, even quoting passages from Deuteronomy, referring to the
Deuteronomic blessings and curses, and focusing on cultic
centralization. Based on my reading of 1 Kings 22-23, I am inclined to
follow the majority on this. In any event, it is a reasonable
alternative to the view that Hilkiah brought Josiah a copy of the
canonical Torah.

(3) Ezra's "book of the law of Moses" has often been assumed to be the
canonical Torah. At least, as envisioned by the narrator, it certainly
included some version of Deuteronomy 23 but also the ritual calendar in
Leviticus 23. Out of all the references to "the book of the law of
Moses" in the Tanakh, those in Ezra-Nehemiah stand the best chance of
being references to the canonical Torah. Yet even here the evidence is
not firm, because the references to the law-book in Ezra-Nehemiah
include materials that cannot be found in the canonical Torah, e.g., the
(indirect?) quotation in Neh 8:15. Thus the law book referenced in
Ezra-Nehemiah seems to be on a trajectory toward the canonical Torah,
but probably not there yet.

(4) The Torah itself describes Moses writing three different law books:
(a) the Book of the Covenant, (b) the Ritual Decalogue, and (c) the
Deuteronomic Code (to use shorthand in each case). The phrase "the book
of the law of Moses" could aptly apply to any of these three,
individually, without referring to the entire canonical Torah (as Jim
pointed out in his comment about "globalizing the local").

These are not necessarily the only alternatives, but simply those that
occur to me at the moment. So again I put forward the claim that
references to "the book of the law of Moses" in the Tanakh can serve as
evidence for Mosaic authorship of the canonical Torah only if those
phrases can be convincingly shown, exegetically, to have reference to
the canonical Torah.

Chris

--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
<http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard>
http://www.iTanakh.org <http://www.iTanakh.org>
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info
<http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info>