1
2
1 Department of Philosophy and History of Science
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Panepistimiopolis, Ilissia, Athens 15784, Hellas gkerami@in.gr
2 Educational and Language Technology Laboratory
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications,
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,
Panepistimiopolis, Ilissia, Athens 15784, Hellas imalagar@di.uoa.gr
Abstract
In the present work the meaning of everyday words of the Modern Greek language is exploring when they are used in the context of Computer Science. It is based on the technical dictionary of informatics named “Jargon.txt”, which has been published via the project “Gutenberg”. The purpose of this work is the investigation of the meaning of the verbs in this microcosm, the syntactic analysis of their definitions and the automatic translation into Greek. A system was implemented in Prolog for the purposes of this work.
The dictionary used for this work, jargon.txt, describes the meaning of these terms in the different branches of Computer Science. It was created from the compilation of terminology mainly used by the programmers of the American Universities and became part of their culture in the ‘70s. It is the product of collective work and an object of obsession among every fanatic user (or hacker) of computer apparatus and networks.
Two interesting observations are: First most of the terms are being used metaphorically. Typically it is said that “a program crashes” instead of simply stales or stops and “a page is hang up on the Net” instead of simply published. As a matter of fact a program cannot “crash” and a piece of code cannot be “hanged” literally. A second case is the use of objects as verbs. It is said, “I will demo this application” using the noun “demo” as a verb or “I will mouse it up” to declare that the program will be executed with the mouse or “I’ll gun it down” to declare that the program will be stopped by any means.
In Greek there exist interesting “greeklish” terms like the word “formarisa” meaning the action of formatting the medium or “computerades” meaning the computer geeks. These terms among others are very interesting neologisms of the language, accused of destroying its texture and flow.
The system consists of a Prolog program named glossologia.pl which consists of three modules, the lexicon, the parser, and a translation module from English to Greek.
The lexicon contains fifty verbs of the English language used in the microcosm of Computer Science along with their translation from English to Greek.
The parser analyses the syntax of the American language according to grammar rules. It also contains all the words used for the translation of the verbs. These words (125 in total) are classified in nine subcategories: pn(pronoun), dt(deterniner), conj(conjunction), part(participle), adj(adjective), p rep(preposition), n(noun), adv(adverb), και v(verb).

The translation subsystem is implemented in Prolog and contains a rule that searches the table with the verbs and displays the meaning in Greek.
The program contains other rules to investigate problems that commonly arise in lexicography like cyclic references and chains of meaning.
References
The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992 as published in the page of “Project Guttenberg”.
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Νικολαρέα Αικ. “ Δημιουργία Δίγλωσσου Γλωσσαρίου για Μεταφραστές http://www.translatum.gr/journal/3/translator-glossary.htm