CAT Tool for Amharic
Thread poster: Harry Bornemann
Harry Bornemann
Harry Bornemann  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 16:57
English to German
+ ...
Feb 28, 2009

Are there any CAT tools able to process Amharic unicode? I tried Trados 6.5 and DVX, using Power Ge'ez 2003 (the only version which works on my German XP computer), but in vain.

 
Hermann Bruns
Hermann Bruns  Identity Verified
Local time: 23:57
English to German
Try MetaTexis Feb 28, 2009

Hallo Harry,

MetaTexis for Word can handle all Unicode languages, including Amharic.

You can download a trial version at www.metatexis.com. The trial version will run without restrictions for up to two months.

Best regards
Hermann


 
Stephen Franke
Stephen Franke
United States
Local time: 15:57
English to Arabic
+ ...
Query the good people at www.ethiotrans.com in San Diego, California Mar 1, 2009

Greetings.

You might query the good people at < www.ethiotrans.com > in San Diego, California.

They work very much in Amharic and other languages of Eastern Africa/Horn of Africa, so they should knoe best about such applications.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Stephen H. Franke
English - Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish
San Pedro, California... See more
Greetings.

You might query the good people at < www.ethiotrans.com > in San Diego, California.

They work very much in Amharic and other languages of Eastern Africa/Horn of Africa, so they should knoe best about such applications.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Stephen H. Franke
English - Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish
San Pedro, California



[Edited at 2009-03-01 00:38 GMT]
Collapse


 
Harry Bornemann
Harry Bornemann  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 16:57
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks Mar 1, 2009

I will try both and report. The translation offices in Addis Ababa don't even know what a CAT tool is..

Harry
(Currently back in Berlin for a few weeks.)


 
Marc P (X)
Marc P (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 23:57
German to English
+ ...
CAT Tool for Amharic Mar 1, 2009

Harry,

What exactly is the problem? Have you got a font installed that can display the Amharic alphabet? If so, most CAT tools should be able to handle it.

As far as I know, Amharic is LTR, so there should be no problem there. (Some related languages were boustrophedon, that would be fun...)

Which direction are you translating in (to or from Amharic?), and what's the format of the source text?

Or do you have an input problem? If you do, that wi
... See more
Harry,

What exactly is the problem? Have you got a font installed that can display the Amharic alphabet? If so, most CAT tools should be able to handle it.

As far as I know, Amharic is LTR, so there should be no problem there. (Some related languages were boustrophedon, that would be fun...)

Which direction are you translating in (to or from Amharic?), and what's the format of the source text?

Or do you have an input problem? If you do, that will generally be OS-related and independent of your CAT tool.

Marc

[Edited at 2009-03-02 09:10 GMT]
Collapse


 
esperantisto
esperantisto  Identity Verified
Local time: 01:57
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Yet problems are possible Mar 2, 2009

Marc P wrote:

As far as I now, Amharic is LTR, so there should be no problem there. (Some related languages were boustrophedon, that would be fun...)


As far as I understand, the Ethiopic script has no spaces or other word dividers. Thus, a CAT tool would require some special parsing procedure for it.

[Edited at 2009-03-02 06:58 GMT]


 
esperantisto
esperantisto  Identity Verified
Local time: 01:57
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Oops, I was wrong Mar 2, 2009

The Ethiopic script does have spaces between words. Thus, we (OmegaT) need just a set of rules for segmentation considering the Ethiopic punctuation.

 
esperantisto
esperantisto  Identity Verified
Local time: 01:57
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Yes, OmegaT can do it Mar 2, 2009

I have created a sample ODT file with a text from the Amharic Wikipedia and created a project in OmegaT. I have also added a rule for Amharic to break into segments by ። (assuming, it is an Amharic equivalent to full stop in Latin/Cyrillic). Well, it looked fine. However, I cannot go on further, because:
a) I don’t know the language;
b) even if I knew, the font I used to get the Ethiopic script displayed (namely, Ethiopia Jiret) does not have Cyrillic letters, only a limited coverage of Latin.
Collapse


 
Harry Bornemann
Harry Bornemann  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 16:57
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
A light at the horizont :-) Mar 2, 2009

Marc P wrote:

What exactly is the problem? Have you got a font installed that can display the Amharic alphabet? If so, most CAT tools should be able to handle it.

As far as I now, Amharic is LTR, so there should be no problem there. (Some related languages were boustrophedon, that would be fun...)

Which direction are you translating in (to or from Amharic?), and what's the format of the source text?

Or do you have an input problem? If you do, that will generally be OS-related and independent of your CAT tool.


The problem is that DVX offers Amharic as a working language, but displays only question marks for Amharic characters, whether Unicode or not, even after adjusting the display settings.
Trados 6.5 does not offer Amharic as a working language at installation, and when I declare any other language (e.g. Zulu) to press Amharic characters into the system, Trados shows only garbage.

Installing Amharic fonts is not enough, you also need software like Power Ge'ez or Visual Ge'ez to enter Amharic characters. This software provides several keyboard layouts: Typewriter (for Amharic keyboards), Phonetic (where one English consonant and one vowel are converted into one Amharic character), and some others (since Ge'ez is not only used for Amharic but also for a few other languages of the 80 languages spoken in Ethiopia).
My old desktop with XP accepts only Power Ge'ez 2003, while my new notebook (Vista-hardware, downgraded to XP) accepts even Visual Ge'ez 2006.

I am not yet translating from or into Amharic (it will take me years to learn it) but I started a translation agency with an Amharic translator in Addis and I want to make the systems run.

I will try Metatexis and OmegaT, but probably not before April, because I have too much to do with clearing out my apartement, visiting relatives etc..

esperantisto wrote:

The Ethiopic script does have spaces between words. Thus, we (OmegaT) need just a set of rules for segmentation considering the Ethiopic punctuation.

Good point, but currently I can hardly discern the Amharic punctuation from its letters and numbers ... I will have to work this out with my Amharic friends when I will be back in Addis next month.

esperantisto wrote:
Yes, OmegaT can do it
...
However, I cannot go on further, because:
a) I don't know the language;
b) even if I knew,...


I will be happy to continue this research in April.

Many thanks,
Harry


 
Leandro Bohnhoff
Leandro Bohnhoff  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 19:57
English to Spanish
Any further news? Jan 15, 2013

Hi All!
This is a very interesting topic. Has there been any further findings?
Thanks in advance.
Leandro.


 
Dominique Pivard
Dominique Pivard  Identity Verified
Local time: 00:57
Finnish to French
GF Zemen Unicode Jan 15, 2013

lbohnhoff wrote:
This is a very interesting topic. Has there been any further findings?

See the following threads, started today:

http://www.proz.com/forum/wordfast_support/241339-tigrinya_supported_in_wordfast_pro.html

http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support/241334-my_language_pair_tigrinya_is_not_found.html

They are related to Tigrinya, not Amharic, but my understanding is you should be able to use the same font (eg. GF Zemen Unicode) with both languages.


 


To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator:


You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request »

CAT Tool for Amharic







CafeTran Espresso
You've never met a CAT tool this clever!

Translate faster & easier, using a sophisticated CAT tool built by a translator / developer. Accept jobs from clients who use Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast & major CAT tools. Download and start using CafeTran Espresso -- for free

Buy now! »
TM-Town
Manage your TMs and Terms ... and boost your translation business

Are you ready for something fresh in the industry? TM-Town is a unique new site for you -- the freelance translator -- to store, manage and share translation memories (TMs) and glossaries...and potentially meet new clients on the basis of your prior work.

More info »