[Lexicog] Digital Glossarization

[Ronald Moe]

Geo Massar wrote:

“"glossarized" ... Is there such a shorter term for it?”

 

We normally speak of ‘glossing’ a text, using ‘gloss’ as a verb. However the
term ‘to gloss’ usually refers to adding a brief translation either above or
below the line of text in a book. The noun ‘gloss’ usually refers to a very
brief (one or two word) translation of a word in a second language, but can
refer to a short label, explanation, or definition of something in the same
language. A text that has a gloss under each word is called a ‘glossed
text’. A list of technical terms at the end of a book is called a
‘glossary’. Such a glossary would include a definition of each technical
term. I’ve never heard the word ‘glossarize’ before and my spell checker
just flagged it. If a book has a glossary, the normal way to refer to this
fact is to say something like “with a helpful 200 word glossary of technical
terms.” I looked up ‘glossarize’ on Google and only got 770 hits, most of
which seemed to be on marginal websites. In contrast ‘glossary’ got
127,000,000 hits. This implies that ‘glossarize’ is not a ‘good’ English
word, but has been coined by analogy with theory/theorize,
category/categorize, memory/memorize. It appears to mean something like “(1)
to provided glossary entries for a text, (2) to produce a glossary of a
book, (3) to add a label to a picture.” Perhaps someday ‘glossarize’ will
enter the mainstream of English. In the meantime ‘glossarize’ is one of
those terms that would need to be included in a glossary. :-)

 

I would imagine that a tool that would look up any given term would be
highly useful to language learners. Others on this list have pointed out the
difficulties in producing a tool that would work on any language. However if
all you want to do is produce a glossary for English, this would be fairly
simple, since English has very few inflectional affixes.

 

I believe there are numerous electronic dictionaries of English that enable
the user to type an English word and see a definition of the word. It might
be an improvement to have a tool that would enable you to click on any word
on the screen and get a definition of the word. An alternative would be to
hold the mouse cursor over a word and get a definition of the word. I would
imagine that some of us would be interested in a software tool that would
enable us to produce either a monolingual or bilingual dictionary/glossary
that could be used as an aid in reading electronic texts in an unfamiliar
language. If you want better input from this group, it might be good to give
us a better idea of exactly what you want to do.

 

Ron Moe

 

 

   _____  

From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of kawaguy32
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 11:18 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] Digital Glossarization

 

Hi, I am new to this group. I sure hope this group would help me out
on my new project. The words above I just made up. It is an electronic
process of the raw text of a given book into electronic book with an
indexed glossary built-in. Amazon.com folks who sell books use
"glossarized" for some of their selling printed books. The word I made
up seems too mouthful. Is there such a shorter term for it?

I ain't no lexicographer but long experienced programmer (over 40
years, now retired.) I developed a relatively sized program that is
able to "pluck" dictionary definitions from the net for each "unknown"
word in a given book and store them on a local system such as a
personal computer. That is the first stage of the said process. The
next stage is then to "glossarize" some those "unknown" words for the
given book. The definitions stored are in HTML format for previewing
purpose. I developed a rather small program that is able to "lookup"
those definitions with an aid of word list from which a user is able
to select a word for the definition. It is just a preview program
before going into "glossanized" process. The second stage is not yet
developed but I am about to commence. I am wondering if there is such
software available on market similar to mine.

If anybody is interested in looking at the previewer with a small
dictionary of "plucked" definitions for your comments, I'll be happy
to upload a zipped file to this group. I would appreciate your comments.

I got the concept of "glossarizing" process not long ago so that I
could enjoy reading ebooks with glossary built-in. Yes, I know there
are already on market electronic dictionaries for ebook readers but
they are not so good enough and sometimes too many definitions for the
same word, somewhat distracts the reader from the continuious thought
while reading. The "glossarized" electronic books would be an ideal
for children, not only those but also ESL readers like myself. I am
deaf since infancy. My vocabulary is relatively low as compared to
many hearing folks'. You can see my English in this writing is not
that great.

If this group I just joined is not the one I could inquire, I would
very much appreciate your directons.

Thank you.

Geo Massar

 


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