In SYSTRAN terminology, a word, all upper case, formed from the initial letters of other words or parts of a series of words, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps.
Adjective:
A word used to modify a noun by limiting or qualifying. In English, it can be distinguished by one of several suffixes, such as -able, -ous, -er, and -est, because it directly precedes a noun or noun phrase, such as red in a red door, or because it is preceded by a form of to be, such as the door is red.
Adverb:
A word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, such as brightly in The sun shines brightly.
Algorithm:
A step-by-step problem-solving procedure.
Application Programming Interface (API) :
A means of using providing programming access to a basic functionality of a program.
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) :
ANSI facilitates development by establishing consensus among qualified groups; it does not itself develop American National Standards (ANSs) .
American Standard Code for International Interchange (ASCII) :
An 8-bit character encloding scheme used in many plain text editors such as MS-Window® Notepad and Unix Emacs.
Article:
A word used to signal a noun and to specify its application. In English, the definite article is the, and the indefinite articles are a and an.
Auxiliary verb:
A verb, such as have, can, or will, that accompanies the main verb in a clause and helps to make distinctions in aspect, mood, tense, and voice.
Batch Translation:
The ability to select and then translate one or more documents at a time.
Bi-directional:
One direction - referring to a SYSTRAN product's ability to translate from a first language into a second, and from the second language the second back into the first. (Alternate - see uni-directional)
Clause:
A group of two or more words which contains a verb. One or more clauses make up a complete sentence.
Clipboard:
A memory space in the Microsoft Windows® operating system where items (such as text or images) are temporarily held when transferring them to a differnent location such as another MS Windows type document or file. When an item is "cut" or "copied", the clipboard is where it is held or copied to until it is "pasted" or written over by the next cut or copy.
Customer Specific Dictionary (CSD):
A dictionary used in translation that has been created by the translator for the purpose of tailoring translations to his specific needs. Definitions in a CSD override the ones in SYSTRAN's dictionaries.
Direct Mode:
An interactive mode of translation that allows the translator to enter text to be translated in the SYSTRAN source text window, and to see the translation in the SYSTRAN target text window. See File Mode.
DNT List:
A list of words created by the translator that will not be translated by the SYSTRAN Translation System.
DNT:
An acronym for Do Not Translate.
Do Not Translate:
A translation option that allows the translator to choose to leave certain words untranslated in the Source text.
Document Type:
A translation option that allows the translator to specify the general style of the text to be translated.
Embedded clause:
A subordinate clause that is embedded in the middle of a main clause. For example, The camera, which I bought yesterday, is already broken.
Expression Dictionary:
The SYSTRAN dictionary that contains expressions. See Stem Dictionary.
Expression:
In SYSTRAN terminology, a noun phrase consisting of more than one noun or any combination of nouns and adjectives, where the Head Word is a noun, such as lug nut, Library of Congress, and red letter day. Complete sentences are not valid SYSTRAN expressions; neither are any phrases that contain verbs.
File Mode:
A non-interactive mode of translation that allows the translator to send a file to be translated and to choose the translation options for it. See Direct Mode.
Finite verb:
A verb form that is limited in tense, person, and number, such as goes in He goes.
First person:
A pronoun that refers to the speaker. For example, I in I see, or We in We are. Also, a verb form that refers to the speaker. For example, am in I am, or are in We are. Verb inflection rarely indicates person in English, but in other languages, it often does.
Head Word:
In SYSTRAN terminology, the noun in a noun phrase which may change in the plural, such as nut in lug nut, Library in Library of Congress, and day in red letter day. The Head Word is not necessarily the same as the Principal Word.
Homograph:
In SYSTRAN terminology, one of two or more words that have the same spelling and are different parts of speech (for example, noun and verb, or adjective and verb). For example, head as in head west or on the head, and light, as in the light box and light the match.
Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML):
An encoding scheme for displaying and hyperlinking pages of information on the Internet.
Imperative:
A verb form that is used to express an order or command. For example, "Eat" in "Eat your vegetables!" The default rules for Imperative translation vary from language to language.
Infinitive:
A verb form that is the ordinary dictionary-entry form. In English, it is often used with "to" as in He wants to eat. It may also occur without "to", for example, get in I made them get in line, or with auxiliary verbs such as "must" as in We must leave.
Inflection:
An alternation of the form of a word by adding suffixes without changing the basic meaning or part of speech, as in making rugs from rug, or by changing the form of a base word, as in making ate from eat.
Language Pair (LP):
A Language Pair is the two languages that are involved in a specific translation.
MIF:
A SYSTRAN acronym for Adobe FrameMaker® file format derived from the filename extention.
Main clause:
A clause that can stand alone as a complete and correct sentence. For example, It was raining.
Multiple Document Interface (MDI):
A type of windows interface with the ability to display more than one document at a time.
Not Found Word List:
An alphabetical list of all words in a text that were not found in the dictionaries used for translation.
Not Found Word Marker:
A mark that the translator can select, which appears in the translation to indicate a Not-Found Word.
Not Found Word (NFW):
A word or string that occurred in the text, but not in the dictionaries used in translation.
Noun:
A word that is used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or action, for example, house, flammability, or movement.
Noun phrase:
A phrase that functions as a noun, and that has a noun as its head word.
Parse:
To break (a sentence) down into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part.
Parser:
In SYSTRAN terminology, the module of the computer program that performs syntactic or semantic analysis of the Source text.
Part of Speech (POS):
The Part of Speech is the linguistic function of a word in a phrase or sentence.
Participle:
A verb form that can be used with an auxiliary verb. It can also function as an adjective or a noun. See Past Participle and Present Participle.
Past participle:
A verb form that indicates past or completed action. It can be used with an auxiliary verb as in The cake was baked yesterday, or as an adjective, as in baked beans.
Phrase:
A sequence of two or more words which express an idea. See also, Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, and Prepositional Phrase.
Preposition:
A word placed before a noun or noun phrase, indicating the relation of that noun or noun phrase to a verb, an adjective, or another noun or noun phrase, such as at, by, in, to, from, and with.
Prepositional phrase:
A phrase that consists of a preposition plus the noun or noun phrase that it governs, such as at the park, in reference to your letter, or from Mars.
Present participle:
A verb form expressing present action, formed in English from the infinitive plus -ing, which can be used with auxiliary verbs as in He is baking a cake; as an adjective, the baking rack; or as a noun, as in, the act of baking.
Principal Word:
The main word in an expression. For example, clip in paper clip. The Principal Word is not necessarily the same as the Head Word. In the expression paper clip box, "clip" is the Principal Word, but "box" is the Head Word.
Pronoun:
A word that functions as a substitute for a noun or a noun phrase and designates persons or things asked for, previously specified, or understood from the context. For example, I, it, that, and which.
Proper noun:
A noun belonging to the class of words used as names for individuals or places. For example, Clinton or Boston.
Rich Text Format (RTF):
A text encoding scheme to allow the display of text in different manners (size, type, etc.) within the same document. Although not exclusively a Microsoft encoding scheme, RTF is commonly found in MS-Windows® Wordpad and used in older versions of MS-Word.
Run-time dictionary:
The binary indexed dictionary file used during the translation process.
Search List:
A list of word for which the translation engine will search.
Second person:
A pronoun that refers to the listener. For example, you in You see or You are. Also, a verb form that refers to the listener. For example, are in You are. Verb inflection rarely indicates person in English, but in other languages, it often does.
Semantic:
Having to do with meaning.
Sentence:
A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or understood and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb.
Source:
The language of the original text, before translation.
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML):
An international Standard (ISO 8879:1986) that describes a generalized marup scheme for representing the logical structure of documents in a system-independent and platform independent manner.
Stem Dictionary:
The SYSTRAN dictionary that contains all forms of single words. See Expression Dictionary.
Subjunctive:
A verb form that indicates possibility, doubt, or desire rather than fact. For example, were in I wish it were true, or start in I suggest you start immediately.
Subordinate clause marker:
A word which indicates that a clause is a subordinate clause, such as that, which, or who.
Subordinate clause:
A clause that modifies or expands on other clauses. A subordinate clause modifies or expands on another clause. It cannot stand alone, as that he gave in The account that he gave was true.
Subordinate phrase:
A phrase that modifies or expands on other phrases.
Syntactic:
Having to do with sentence structure.
Target:
The language into which the text is translated.
Third person:
A pronoun that refers to neither the speaker nor the listener. For example, He in He is, She in She is, it in it is, or They in They are. Also, a verb form that refers to neither the speaker nor the listener. For example, is in He is and She is, or are in They are. Verb inflection rarely indicates person in English, but in other languages, it often does.
TM/2:
IBM Translation Manager/2 V2.0
Topical Glossary (TG):
A translation option that allows the translator to choose appropriate subject areas for the document.
Trados:
A Trados translation translation memory system format.
Uni-directional:
One direction - referring to a SYSTRAN product's ability to translate from a first language into a second but not from the second language the second back into the first. (Alternate - see bi-directional)
Verb phrase:
In SYSTRAN terminology, a phrase or other construction used as a verb. Verb phrases are not acceptable entries in a CSD.
Verb:
A word that expresses existence, action, or occurrence.
Verb-noun homograph:
In SYSTRAN terminology, a word that has a verb usage, such as the word work in I work all day and a noun usage, such as that word work in Work is fun.
WinCSD:
The acronym for SYSTRAN's Customer Specific Dictionary with a Windows@reg interface.
WP5X or WP6X:
SYSTRAN acronyms for Word Perfect version 5.x and 6.x
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This File Last Updated: Tue Jun 13 08:00:00 2000