(I think it's fun, anyway.) There is a program online that is more of a demo than a real translation service, but if it were fully implemented, it would be a great way for those working on their own to translate Latin and learn at the same time. The program, which is from the Danish Syddansk Universitet, is called Visual Interactive Syntax Learning (VISL). It has been around for a while, but I never properly explored it before.
On the site is a bank of sentences, from various Latin authors and a few from Danish Latin introductory texts, that have been analyzed by the program. After selecting your author from the icons, you select your sentence and a new window opens showing the relationships among the words in tree form. I haven't figured out all the abbreviations, but one of the challenges of learning and reading Latin is figuring out which word goes with which, so even if you can't understand any of the labels, you should be able to see the relationships.
On the site is a bank of sentences, from various Latin authors and a few from Danish Latin introductory texts, that have been analyzed by the program. After selecting your author from the icons, you select your sentence and a new window opens showing the relationships among the words in tree form. I haven't figured out all the abbreviations, but one of the challenges of learning and reading Latin is figuring out which word goes with which, so even if you can't understand any of the labels, you should be able to see the relationships.
See Pre-Analyzed Latin Sentences (VISL)
- More Latin Parsing Tools
- Completely Parsed Latin (Archibald A. Maclardy - The First Oration of Cicero Against Catiline)
Comments
What a profound disservice YOU do to talented linguists such as myself (I teach five languages, Latin and Greek being two of them) when you promulgate such programs. It’s almost as awful as the German one that I’ve seen on About.com. And I happen to teach German, too. Shame on you. My Latin students WERE using your website for information on Classical Civilization. My colleagues and I will think twice about suggesting it ever again after your most recent posting.
THIS is what you encourage on your website? My entire school district will no longer be using your website as a reference for ANYTHING.
Would one of you please tell me why you’re outraged? What am I missing?
Are you so blind that you can’t see your mistake? You are giving access through the NYT’s website to, as you described, an as yet fully developed translation website. Perhaps you should rethink the parameters of your website. By what you published, you encourage students of classical languages to plug in a sentence and get a translation rather than learning how to translate, read and enjoy a classical language. You ruin the educational experience. I teach at a NYC college. And my students won’t be using your website after this. I can’t wait to tell my colleagues across the country.
It’s Bastille Day. [edited to remove threatening comment.] All of my colleagues have decided to boycott your website. You have no respect for the beauty of Latin and Greek translation.
How DID you get your job?
Terrible.
Agree with you, Betty.
I’ll tell my fellow teachers
by e-mail right now.
We’ll cross this website right off our list.
Latin Fun?
Miss Gill, when was the last time that you ACTUALLY translated a passage from Ovid? Plautus?
YOU need a good laugh.
Glad my Latin teachers just told me about your “faux pax” (Can you translate that expression? It’s simple French.) during Summer vacation.
I just STRUCK your website from my syllabus.
I have taught Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and Italian for more that 30 years. Yes, people like myself DO exist and ARE adept when it comes to computer technology, much to the chagrin of their students.
Are you serious?
When was the last time you saw the inside of a classroom?
When your website was suggested to me, I looked at it and REALLY didn’t find it useful.
NOW I FIND IT USELESS.
I do not plan to make any more responses after this.
This response is mostly to Kevin. You’re quite right that it has been a while since I translated Ovid — I took a week off from my one book of Metamorphoses a week (see the forum thread) to study for my Dutch final. I was taking Dutch so I could read the notes in my Brill edition of “Metamorphosen”.
Although the site all of you are up in arms about will not translate into English for people, and it will not translate passages students select from their homework (unless it is already in the “bank” and the student can locate it), there are plenty of people out there who are working on their own and can use all the help they can get — no teachers to turn to when stuck. Making Latin available to interested individuals (primarily adults or homeschooling families) regardless of whether they have funds to pay for teachers or books is what got me into writing about Latin for the Internet.
When I think of what might be of interest in the area of Latin, I think of them or the adults who write me asking translation questions that show a complete lack of understanding of the basic grammar.
I tried to parse/tree a sentence of the Aeneid for a syntax class, but I wasn’t allowed to change the word order. I had arrows going all over the place. It was a mess, so it gave me a great appreciation for a neat syntactic tree for Latin like those provided by the program.
I am very unhappy that I upset all you teachers. I am not trying to subvert your courses. I don’t see how the program I think is fun would do so, but if it does, I guess it makes sense for you to be upset. Evidently you believe my endorsement of the product is an endorsement of cheating.
I am appalled at the clueless, knee-jerk responses these so-called “academics” have posted to this blog. The program Ms. Gill recommended is NOT, as one commenter described, a “fully developed translation website” wherein one can “plug in a sentence and get a translation.” It’s a helpful learning tool for autodidacts such as myself. OF COURSE it’s better to take a class in Latin and learn from a talented teacher, but being disabled and homebound, far from the nearest qualified instructor, I have limited resources and must learn for myself — slowly, painfully, and awkwardly. Kudos to the
Kudos to the Visual Interactive Syntax Learning site for placing this helpful resource on line, thanks to Ms. Gill for drawing my attention to it, and up yours to you snooty academicians for viewing the world through blinders and tromping on the humble ambitions of non-academics who would like to broaden their own horizons.
(Sorry for the broken comment I sometimes have trouble with my keyboard).
Yes, Miss Gill. Your endorsement of such a program promotes lax translation (and cheating). You should teach a Latin One course and see from an instructor’s perspective what you have unleashed. You sit there somewhere in cyberspace, paid by About.com, a company owned by the prestigious New York Times, to make suggestions that have awful repercussions in the classroom.
Wow, I have never seen such a disgusting display of arrogance and pettiness is all my life. You know-it-all idiots that wrote these hateful comments should be forced to get real jobs, and have your bloody mouths taped shut. If someone were to care what you have to say – and God knows why – do you not see how hurt they would be? Do you people have souls? It is Latin Fun for God’s Sake. You cannot possibly take yourselves this seriously can you? You know the rest of the world is laughing at you, right? I am sorry you people exist, but I believe that you will get your just rewards. I curse you, you arrogant worms, and may you rot. About.com has to remove this stupid system of blog comments and spare the world the ramblings of losers like you people. So, rock on, N.S. Gill, they are not worth your time to read.
I was unaware that the act of learning Latin turns a person into an arrogant jackass. If Latin is so straightforward that it can be automatically translated and students no longer need to waste their time figuring it out, then all of the time you academics spend studying it is completely wasted and you should probably go do something useful, like make fries for people at McDonalds or donate blood (preferrably ALL of it). Get over yourselves.
Acting hostile to a lady just because she has a different opinion then you is impolite. May I suggest trying “Constructive Criticism”.
Real Latin teachers should not be threatened by new teaching tools. True academics would actually have visited the site and seen what it can and can’t do before condemning it out of hand. If these people who call themselves teachers are, in fact, teachers, I shudder for the fate of our school systems. Each comment has been a rousing argument for the choice of homeschooling over public education.
N.S. Gill, just ignore these fools. I applaud the consistent excellence of your site. Keep up the great work!
Two comments on this thread had comments threatening violence. Both sets of comments have been edited out. Please remember that you are guests on this site. Posts may be deleted.
I realize that I am probably beating a dead horse here by posting again, but the fact that the guide has to admonish people not to threaten violence over a Latin translator has just escalated these posts from mere folly to a major study in psychology. Congratulations on being so over the top on such an arbitrary subject, I will keep watching this space for your brilliant comments – I can’t wait to see what’s next! And, to the guide who is forced to put up with this nonsense: non carborundum illegitimi.
Flippin’ ‘eck!
Yes, NS Gill, you obviously deserve to be destroyed in the fires of hell itself for talking about something that’s available on the internet. Self-evidently, all the outraged pomposity of the traditional Latin Teachers (who, incidentally, sound like they come from the same set of people who made my schooldays miserable) is incontravertibly correct. How dare you give people options?!
You are personally responsible for the pupils of these face-reddening teachers failing to learn anything, having their internet access censored, and developing abnormally.
Incidentally, as a dyslexic who finds traditional teaching methods tortuous, and who loves speaking German as a second language but finds it difficult to *write* in that language, I find online web translation tools excellent and – yes – FUN ways to explore how sentences can be structured… not replacements for the learning process (I’m a language teacher, by the way).
But hey, long may such bigotry as we’ve seen on this blog continue. It made me giggle.