Together for Burundi!

Let's start with the bad news: the main Kamusi server is still not re-open to the public. Not being a systems administrator myself, and not having funds to pay a sysadmin, I'm taking a Zen approach to working with our valient volunteer as he sinks his own time and treasure into making it possible to actually share our work with the public again. When will we be fully back in business? It could be next week. It could be months. Zen.

Because, other than our server and funding woes, the rest of the past few months has been nothing but good news. 

• EmojiWorldBot (https://storebot.me/bot/emojiworldbot). We started this in April, and had the official release of version 1.0 for World Emoji Day, July 17. This is a dictionary between Emoji and more than 70 languages, and we have the tools to expand to many more. Why is this important? Well, Emoji are the common set of images that have been installed on, count 'em, 2 billion devices worldwide. This makes them a unique communications medium, and a shortcut for us to connect diverse languages, using Emoji as the pivot. We have a video to explain the basic features at https://youtu.be/eJV-MwCNeLs , and over 1100 happy users in the first few days of the release.
• Chrome Extension. You want this. You really want this. Unfortunately, you can't have it yet because it is still on the internal server, but hey, Zen. When we can serve it, you will be able to double click any word on any page, and immediately look it up in its own language and the translation language of your choice. Here's the video: https://youtu.be/8Ve3aAC6YBY - there will soon be at least 30 languages interoperating. There are another 20-odd data sets that are open to us in principle, but we need signatures from various government ministries or senior professors, so... Zen.
• Sign languages. I'm really happy about this: https://youtu.be/pzaKFVmreR8 . We're importing videos from the SignTyp project at the University of Connecticut for more than 20 different sign languages (and may have a source for another 25). The prototype works nicely. This will be a one-of-a-kind tool for communications between deaf people and any spoken language in the system. Want to help get it launched? Don't be Zen, send an email and volunteer to help with the DUCKS that we need to line up the data.
• DUCKS stands for Data Unified Conceptual Knowledge Sets. This is our way of aligning data, so that we can find the equivalent terms across languages. We've got 100,000 definitions, and a game for matching to them - basically, asking "is this thing that is being called 'cup' something that you drink from, or something that you win at a tournament?" This lets us connect a ton of different languages and data sets, and get all our ducks in a row. However, it runs on our internal server, so access is by invitation only. You're invited - just send an email, and we'll get you hooked up.
• WordUp! is our mobile app for getting terms from participants for languages far and wide, by giving them ducks-aligned concepts we don't yet have in their language. This needs a little polishing before we are ready to release it, but it is basically ready to go when the main server upgrades are finished.
• We will also build a mobile app for dictionary lookups, combining the architecture of the Chrome extension and WordUp!. We need somewhere between a day and a week of coding power, and then you'll be able to do language-to-language lookups for any pair right from your phone, without using a browser. Of course, we need the server, and budget would be really helpful. Zen.
• Pre:D. You probably don't want to read about "source side predisambiguation", so I'll just say that we've made some real progress on a program that will rock the socks off current approaches to getting the right vocabulary in machine translation. That is, where Google Translate has to guess in a sentence whether "She asked for a light for her cigarette" is referring to a flame or a lamp, Pre:D will know. Not sure when we'll have something you can use. New Years? Zen.
• EatUp! We've made a lot of progress on an application for restaurant owners to input their menus in their local language, which translates the contents to the language spoken by the person who is tempted to eat there. Do not tell me that Google already does this. Don't go there, unless you think that "chicken tenders" are tasty people who take care of chickens, and I could go on all night. Again, they guess, and our point is to come at translation tasks on the basis of real knowledge, and do it for a whole lot of languages outside of the ones that have a pay-day. We're aiming to have this released by December.
• EatUp! is also our platform for developing systems for other "controlled vocabulary" applications we want to implement as soon as possible, beginning with the FirstUp! app that has the terms that First Responders would need in an emergency, across languages, for situations like childbirth, poisoning, fires, heart attacks, etc. For the emergency vocabulary we've got access to some fantastic data sets that we can line up among a few dozen languages already, and farm to WordUp! for other languages. Guess where the hold up is. Budget. Server. Zen.

There's more in the pipeline, but I'll save it so there is something new to talk about in the next update.

What does this have to do with Burundi? A lot, really. WordUp!, in particular, is built with our African students in mind, because it pushes tasks to a system that works on the technology they are carrying around, without them incurring network costs. The game elements of EmojiWorldBot are similarly geared toward least common denominator technology. Many of the several dozen languages we are adding to the next version of the Bot are excluded languages from around Africa, and many of the data sets we are adding to DUCKS are from various African dictionary projects that have been mostly inaccessible before now. And the Kamusi Here! applications that build on the core logic of the Chrome extension will put all of this at the hands of students wherever they are, so they can type right into a chat (Facebook, WhatsApp, etc) something like, spanish:kirundi casa , and we will give them the lookup results, with any beginning or ending language that we have in the system. We haven't been able to move forward in the past few months with the students in Burundi because we haven't raised the full amount we need, and we haven't raised the full amount we need because the server has been offline and can't serve as a showcase, but the back end is ready for them. So we'll keep plugging away on the tools, praying away on the server, and, you know, Zen.

Happy Northern Summer/ Southern Chill,

Martin