WELCOME TO MEEMO
The MEEMO project was inspired by the needs of my kid who wanted to have a two way Maltese to English,
English to Maltese online translator to facilitate doing his HW. Following numerous suggestions and
encouragements I continued to develop a prototype I had created as part of a project which eventually
became the prototype and basis of a research project which delved into web application security
vis-a-vis the PHP programming language.
THE AIM
The aim was to create a single word translator on a web front end making it efficienct and
light-weight. Part of my project was a study on how to make a more effective translator by offering
phrase and paragraph translations through technologies such as the Grammatical Framework (Ranta, 2003)
and Machine Translation (MT). Not being a linguistics expert, this task proves to be daunting and
beyond the scope of my original project(at least at the moment) -- therefore you will some find limitations.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Being that the database is so small in comparision to number of words that exist in Maltese and
English, the target audience would probably be at a low level. Syllabi and particles are omitted and
the search is limited to nouns and unconjucated words.
The main difficulty in online translators is getting the context and conjugation right in fact most
online translators are know to suffer from the following constraints:
- The inability to use context for paragraph translations
- The inability to use simple logic to choose the correct translation of a noun with several meanings
- The excessive literal translations
As Grant (2005, Web of words: Online translation services) mentions in his online article, he finds
that translators such as Babel Fish; albeit being the most famous translator; are prone to
misinterpreting words by providing literal translations. He claims that online translators should not
be relied on to provide the exact meaning of foreign words and phrases, but rather that they can give
a good idea of the gist of the meaning and that when the alternative is knowing nothing at all, it's
not exactly a risk.
USAGE
- Search for SINGLE words - not phrases. At the moment, spaces are removed and multiple words
are joined to form one word. Search for singular words. Avoid plurals and conjucated verbs.
- The database is a dynamic database which allows users to suggest words that have not been found to be
included. If a word is not found, you can suggest the word for inclusion. Please note that I won't add
conjucated verbs or any obscene words. Those words can be found in Urban Dicitionary. Once approved
they automatically become part of the core database.
- If a word is not found, you can broaden your search to look for part of a word in other words. This
will attempt to give you a broader result set.
- The Maltese words stored in the database do not have Maltese characters such as the customised
Gh, g, h, z and c. This is a known limitation at the moment and you must be aware of it as it implies incorrect spelling.
- This program will not do your HW and is not directly intended to be a fully fledged dictionary.
- If you spot any spelling mistakes / errors in translation please be kind and use the Contact Form and advise me.
Other than that, feel free to use MEEMO for whatever your scope or purpose. Suggestions and improvements are always more than welcome.
Thanks for visiting,
Donald Tabone
Last updated 08-12-2007
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