i want to create a program that translates a sentance in english to another language

[jerger]

I want to help teach to a minority group in Milwaukee, so I want to create a dictionary program that translates a sentence (like a homework problem or teacher instructions), from English into Hmong.

I have one Idea, and that is to have an English text file of all the A-words, then a Hmong text file of the proper translations. Each text file would have the same amount of lines, with one english word per line, then translated to hmong. Would it be even possible to..

1. user inputs question, "Describe the holocaust"
2. describe is looked in the d text (like if d, search d.txt), then the word is found. then it either compares it to a translation txt (like hmong-d.txt), spitting out the word. then it would prompt to the next word to translate, one line at a time.

A different way was to have 1 giant text file for each letter. like look up "albino", when it finds the word in the a a-dictionary, it searches for the albino string, then finds the comma, then spits out the word/words after the comma. would this be possible as well? which method is easiest for someone that hasn't c++ in a few years?

so far I have a useless code typed up. i just want to start simple getting a-words to work, then get more complex from there. once i have a start i can go with it. please help me, i would love to reach the needs of my esl students who could use this greatly in the US.

summary,i want to take a line of words, compare each word to a specific dictionary, then output one line at a time, the translation. thank you so much!

this code is not correct:

#include <iostream> // I/O
#include <fstream> // file I/O
#include <iomanip> // format manipulation
#include <string>

//This program will hopefully translate english to hmong
using namespace std;
string english; //declare english word to translate
string search; //what to search

int main()
{

cout << "Type the english words here, then press enter. Make sure to copy the words correctly. If you need to spell check use www.google.com" ;
cin >> english;

ifstream myFile;
myFile.open ("c:\\eAh.txt") ;

string* search = english; //search using input
int offset; // where it was found (or not (-1))
if ((offset = line.find(searc h, 0)) != string::npos) {
cout << "found '" << search << "' @ offset " << offset << endl;
}

return 0;
}

[jerger]

there was 2 missing headers i needed and got them now from the creator... i just need help removing punctuation now:
http://www.thescripts. com/forum/showthread.php? p=2653760#post2 653760

[Robbie]

Good luck with the project. I haven't read everything, but it seems you're now able to pick out each separate word in a sentence and look them up in a dictionary file, replacing each word with a translated version from the dictionary.
But simply replacing words won't get text 'translated' to another language properly since different languages have different structures. It's much more complicated... >_<

<MassiveGrammar Rant>

To change the sentence structures you need to look out for particles ("with", "from", etc), then try to select the text between these particles (remembering which particle each of these phrases is for), then insert these new phrases into the final translated text in whatever structure is right for that language.

I don't understand any Hmong at all, but I have been throwing together a little attempt of a program (although it is in Visual Basic 6) to pick out the particles and try to 'understand' a Japanese sentence...
- Screenshot -
Although it's nowhere near complete and doesn't translate words, it's managing to see the particles and pick out the words which those particles are applied to... then trying to change the order of those words/phrases in the 'Full translation' part (although not that well).

Someone also mentioned that one word in Hmong may mean one thing but it can have its meaning changed by adding another word after the first one. That's even more so a problem in Japanese because there are no spaces to tell when one word ends and the next begins...
If you're going to make it pick out each word separately, automatically, to try to fix a problem of it returning a SINGLE 3-word thing as 3 separate words or such, I suggest putting the longest lines (single things made out of most words) FIRST in the dictionary, before the separate words, to rule out the possibility of one of the words being part of something 'bigger' (if you see what I mean)...

</MassiveGrammarR ant>