============================================================================== INFORM TRANSLATION REPORT FOR GERMAN Filename: LIBR_97.TXT Toni Arnold, 1997 The §number refers to the corresponding section in: DUDEN 4, Die Grammatik; Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien, Zurich 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This file is not more updated and can differ from actual implementations of the German Inform Tranlsation. For changes and improvements see LIBR_98.TXT 1. Some remarks on ortography because I'm Swiss and not German. --------------------------------------------------------------- Some months ago there was a writing reform in Germany which changed some rules for ortography. Because I have learnt the old one (and I am not the only one) I will write consecuently the traditional ortography. My mother language is Swiss German; this is our spoken but hardly written dialect which is normally not understood by the Germans. So we learn German from TV and at scool for reading; this language is called "Written German". The Swiss Written German has some little differences from German German - as you might imagine, I find it just better the Swiss way... The most important is that we got no @ss , the German sz. (@ss in Inform). I just don't know the rules where Germans write ss and where they write @ss because in Switzerland we always write ss. I could try to set @ss, but I would make a whole lot of mistakes. Forthermore there is no @ss in capitalized letters, so Germans would write "mu@ss" as "MUSS" or (!) "MUSZ" (which nobody would understand but is correct) for the verb "must". For this reason I will consequently write the Swiss "ss" or "SS". At the "translating to Informese" stage I will convert User Input that contains the German sz into ss. Another problem are the @: - letters. In Swiss typewriter German we got no capitalized @:a, @:o or @:u and write consequently Ae, Oe or Ue at the beginning of the word. The reason for this is that Switzerland has four languages which have different accented letters that have to appear on the same writing machine keyboard - so they omitted some. (On an old machine of mine there is even no "!". It has to be built by ".", "backspace" and "'"). Here I will use the German conventions and allow upper case accented letters. For the umlauts see the LIBR_98.TXT-File. 2. The translation ------------------ 2.1. Filenaming --------------- In this section I will go step by step through the Inform Translator's Manual, 9th Deceember 1996. I will replace the file "English.h" by the file "German.h" and the file "Grammar.h" with the File "GermanG.h" as described in §1. This means that in the example game (park.inf) the last line has to be replaced for "GermanG", the new grammar file. (The extension .h is set by inform). To the .icl-Files "park.icl" AND (!!) "modules.icl" I have added the following command to include the right files: +language_name="German" 2.2. Accented letters --------------------- I have defined the letters @:a,@:o,@:u and (altough I will not use it) @ss as Inform characters. There occured a really heacy problem with the MaxZip-Interpreter: it does not accept any accented letters, so I used an old no-name-ZIP which takes only 47154 bytes and works fine. For your interpreter, you have to ind it out yourself. 2.3. Compass directions ----------------------- Because "nord" can be translated into German either "Norden" which means the name of the direction or "nšrdlich" which means the direction as an adverb. I defined both. An example would be: Gehe nach Norden. = go to the north. VS Gehe noerdlich. = go north "north wall" was translated wit "noerdliche Wand", it could also be translated as "Wand im Norden.", but this is not supported. 2.3.1/2 Vocabulary ------------------ Translated the given verbs. 2.4. Pronouns ------------- I have added the pronouns as described in Handbook and §547. As far as I see there are only 3rd-person-pronouns asked. 2.5. Descriptors ---------------- This is called "Artikel" or "Pronomen" in German. First comes the definite Article (DEFART), §535 Then the indefinite Article (INDEFART), §535; In german there is no plural indefinite article. Then the possesive Pronouns (POSSES), §555 and §556 I am not sure at this moment what this possesives really are. In the POSSES-Section there are "Demonstrativpronomen" too. -> implemented "diese" and "jene" (§561) "Possesivpronomen" I have added like Demonstratives: they are declinated the same. I think that this section is dangerous for errors; I'm sure I will have to go again througt this, esp. with the pronouns. 2.6. Numbers ------------ Translated the section 0-20. 2.7 Contraction ----------------- Removed. 2.7 Articles ------------ Translated to German; there are three sexes and two numbers. 2.8 Direction ------------- Translated to German. 2.9 LanguageNumber + TimeOfDay ------------------------------ Translated to german without problems. 2.10. Keys ---------- It was a bit difficult, i will have to come back on things like WHOM__TX (-> "worauf") and WHICH__TX 2.11 ---- Librarymessages begun to see difficulties. Important: Isorare needs often correction with pronouns, see ex. Search:5 2.12 ---- Translation LanguageToInformese: - Handling of facultative -e-suffix in German imperative verbs - translation "am" to "an dem" and "im" to "in dem" 3. Translation of GermanG ------------------------- Translated the verbs that I found translatable. 4. Inflection: German cases --------------------------- German needs some additions for inflection with the german case-system. This is necessary because nouns and pronouns occur in every of the four cases in printed text, so the case must be evey time they are printed - it would require a complex syntax analysis of the text to derive case automatically. These additions are in the file "TGerman.h" and are the following: 4.1 printing german articles ---------------------------- There are 8 new articles which represent the 4 cases in singular and plural. These replace the inform articles (the) and (a). Every object needs now to be attributet with either male, female or neuter. The articles are only given in the male form for the 4 cases because these are not ambigue in German. Gender assignment is done automatically. (der) (den) (dem) (des) as definite articles (ein) (einen) (einem) (eines) as indefinite articles for the cases nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. If the objectname is given as a plural the pluralname attribute must be set. Upper case articles must be pressuffixed with "G" for german "gross". e.g. (Gder) (Geinem) 4.2 Changed Verblib ------------------- This has the consequence that I have to change the verblib. Every occurence of (the) or (a) has to be replaced. (eg. in WriteListFrom) Modified: line 255, 333, 593, 1334, 1694, 1718 4.3 declination suffixes for nouns ---------------------------------- It is now necessary that every noun is given a deklination property which means the declination type nach Grammatik-Duden (pg. 220). To see the suffixes look at Array ta_LanguageNounSuffix. To derive the german "Umlaut" in plural (which is part of the declination) the pluralname-property must be given. 4.4 Printing pronimina ---------------------- These are coded in a similar way like articles. The forms for "ItorThem" are (er) (ihn) (ihm) (seiner), uppercase forms prefixed with a "G". ThatorThose is replaced by (dieser) (diesen) (diesem) (dieses) resp. with the prefix "G" for uppercase forms. CTheyreorThats is replaced by GEristSiesind and prints the form derived by (Ger). 4.5 Added Adjectives -------------------- Added six new properties: adj adj2 adj3 adj4 adj5 adj6 for max. six adjectives which are declinated automatically. 4.6 Added post-ordered word groups ---------------------------------- Added the property post for word groups to be printed after the object name. 5 Parsing additions ------------------- The parser is at the moment the weak point because it does not recognize case. There is a lemmatize-routine at the LanguageToINformese-stage which just removes any suffix until it gets a lemma that is in the lexicon. For that reason plural names with "Umlauten" must be explicitely given. The Z input routine does not recognize @:a, @:o and @:u, so these have to be replaced with "ae", "oe" and "ue".