You are on page 1of 3

Readme file for Methrahessi v1.

30
=================================
CONTENTS
========
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:

Introduction
Installation
Features of Methrahessi
Linguistic Notes
Future Development
Distribution
Getting Methrahessi
Contact details
Acknowledgements

1: Introduction
===============
Welcome to the world's first (and almost certainly last!) Lapine-English / Engli
sh-Lapine translation program, with the emphasis firmly on the Lapine to English
side of things. Methrahessi (which means "Storyteller" in Lapine) can be consid
ered supplementary to my online course, "Frithaes! An introduction to Colloquial
Lapine" (see section 8: "Contact Details" for the URL).
As with a paper dictionary, this program is in no way a substitute for proper st
udy of the language, but I hope it will prove to be a useful aid. I strongly adv
ise you to read both this readme file and, especially, TUTORIAL.TXT before using
Methrahessi.
Methrahessi should run without problems on Windows 95 and upwards.
2: Installation
===============
The basic Methrahessi package should contain six files:
METHRAHESSI_130.EXE
ENGLAP.MTH
LAPENG.MTH
HISTORY.TXT
README.TXT
TUTORIAL.TXT

The executable program


English to Lapine word list
Lapine to English word list
A brief account of Methrahessi's development
This readme file
A brief "Getting Started" guide

These should all be extracted to the same directory; no further installation is


necessary.
3: Features of Methrahessi
==========================
As of this version (v1.30), Methrahessi has the following features:
* Vocabulary of 340 Lapine and 420 English words, easily extensible by the user
* Can recognise and translate all regular Lapine plural forms
* Can handle regular third-person singular verbs ending with "-ing" and past ten
ses ending with "-ed".
* Specific routines to handle "said", "went" and "came" in English to Lapine tra
nslation
* Handles most punctuation correctly, including double quotes (not brackets!)
* Translation speed c. 35-40 words per second on my P3-533MHz machine

* Some /extremely/ simple context handling routines.


* Er...
* That's it. =:P
4: Linguistic Notes
===================
Translation software is notoriously hard to write - even commercial packages cos
ting many thousands of pounds are unsatisfactory for much serious work. A little
freeware program such as this is therefore never going to be a substitute for h
uman (or lapine!) learning.
As of v1.30, Methrahessi does not attempt to go very much at all beyond a crude
word-by-word translation - its aim at present is mainly to allow the learner to
get the gist of a Lapine passage, by combining their own knowledge of the langua
ge with the output from the program.
I have concentrated on translation from Lapine to English, as I consider the mos
t likely use of this program to be in aiding learners or non-Lapine speakers in
their comprehension of short passages of Lapine. The English to Lapine facilitie
s are, for the moment at least, very much second best - for example, even many r
egular third-person singular verbs are not catered for, as the "-s" termination
tends to make them look like plural nouns to a computer. I've written some extre
mely simple code to handle the most common forms, but English has a *lot* of irr
egular ones. The same goes for the past tense - "she hopped" will translate prop
erly, despite the doubled "p" but not "she ate".
In the case of a few Lapine words which are impossible to translate easily into
English (eg "tharn"), I have opted to simply repeat the Lapine in the output - s
o "ai laynt tharn" would produce "THEY WAS THARN". (Yes, it says "WAS" for plura
ls, at least for now - it's simpler than putting "WAS/WERE", and the meaning is
still clear.)
I've chosen to represent the future of "to be" (ie, "will") by "layth" rather th
an "lay zayn" for simplicity, though there's not a lot in it. The only English p
ast participles recognised are "was/were", "said", "came" and "went".
Inflected Lapine is almost entirely ignored: its grammatical structure is so dif
ferent as to require a completely different approach to translation, and I reall
y don't have the time to write two programs!
5: Future Development
=====================
Despite saying in the readme files to earlier versions that any sort of contextu
al analysis of the translations was a non-starter, I now feel that some limited
processing could be done. I shan't go into great detail on this just yet, but th
ere could be some interesting developments in a while... but please be aware tha
t given my usual pace of development, "a while" could easily mean several years.
Being a little more specific, though, I want to improve the handling of possessi
ves ("the chief's burrow" etc), the processing of third-person singular verbs, p
ast tenses and also allow a little more flexibility in terms of English past par
ticiples instead of "hard-coding" them into the .MTH files as separate words. Wa
tch this space!
NOTE: Methrahessi's word lists contain *British* spellings of English words! You
can easily change them to your own taste if required - despite the .MTH extensi
on, they are plain text files and can be edited in Notepad or the text editor of
your choice. You can also add extra definitions in this way, provided that the

layout is strictly adhered to - for example, you *must* use spaces, not tabs, to
pad out columns.
6: Distribution
===============
Methrahessi is freeware, and may be freely distributed on a non-commercial basis
. The program was written in Delphi 6 PE, and the utterly dreadful source code i
s available on request to anyone insane enough to want it - see section 9 ("Cont
act details") for my email address.
7: Getting Methrahessi
======================
As of v1.30, Methrahessi finally has a home on the web! =:) You can obtain the l
atest version of this program from my furry website, "Logan's Runes", at:
http://www.loganberry.furtopia.org/
If you encounter any problems with this site, then feel free to email me (see th
e next section).
8: Contact details
==================
Comments on Methrahessi, the Lapine language or Watership Down in general are mo
st welcome, and can be sent (please use a clear subject line to avoid my spam fi
lters) to:
loganberrybunny@yahoo.co.uk
My detailed course, "Frithaes! An Introduction to Colloquial Lapine", can be fou
nd on my other website, "Bits'n'Bob-stones":
http://www.geocities.com/daveb75/
9: Acknowledgements
====================
* Richard Adams - of course!
* Zoe Kealtan, for her original work on Lapine grammar.
* The members of the 'watershipdown' Yahoo Group, particularly Befrafa, Entei-ra
h, Hawthorn and Rdiger Grammes.
* Borland for Delphi, though their no longer offering a PE version is IMHO utter
stupidity and playing into the paws of Microsoft.
* Furtopia, thanks to whom I finally have somewhere to put Methrahessi up for do
wnload.
* Everyone else connected, in however small a way, with Mr Adams' wonderful stor
y.
===============================================================
David "Loganberry" Buttery, Worcestershire, England, March 2004
===============================================================

You might also like