Text simplification... Well, I realised and discovered the intricacies associated with these two words when I decided to do my final semester project with Mr Sudarshan Iyengar from IISc. On listening to the project idea and details, I realized this topic falls under something that interests me the most, the English language! It would definitely provide a rich learning experience and be extremely fun to work on!
Text simplification will aid in tackling one of the problems faced by many readers: failing to comprehend the text being read by them and losing interest in the article, blog or excerpt due to excess complexity of language. Genuine interest may turn into impatience! ( I say this from past experiences of attempting to read philosophical novels and autobiographies and giving up on completing the book because of the language complexity involved.)
My work on the project kick started when I heard the line “I was flabbergasted by your flamboyance”. That’s when I realized, I sure do need text simplification to help me understand that sentence! I joined my team members to write a python program that was a part of our task-to-be-done-soon exercise, something that triggers the interest to learn and ignites the spark to finish the assignment before the given deadline!!
From then on, it was a continuous learning process. Whether it was learning about Python, installing Python and various packages, understanding Natural Language Processing Toolkit, Python debugger and WordNet or learning and sharing the information that goes into understanding and implementing the project. Each of them was fun to do! The discussions help to provide the prerequisites for the project progress and raise issues and doubts that will go into achieving the aim of this project, i.e breaking down the complexity of the text by natural language processing to make it readable and understandable by the human reader.
More importantly, this project provides scope for a lot of creative inputs and ideas. Amalgamation of these ideas will help develop this project and help surpass the target that has been set for this project. We may actually overcome the semantic hurdles associated with the text and understand what the writer or author of the complex text had in mind while putting it forth and retain the ideology and essence of the original text and not just perform a direct or crude conversion of the text under consideration.
All in all, it has been quite an experience so far which includes the rule to treat other team members if you don’t make it on the time set by our guide, Mr. Sudarshan, for the day ( the rule is applicable to our guide too, so there is impartiality!) , tea and lunch breaks that extend to indefinite periods and the oh-my-God-I-actually-need-to-brush-up-my-English-vocabulary-and-grammar-skills feeling.! I’m sure I would have sharpened and improved my English vocabulary and verbal skills by the end of this project!
Nice writeup.... amalagamation requires TS but it hits and triggers your neurons and boasts the reader's ego :-))
ReplyDeleteThe sentences with hyphen were funny :-)
I thought you would include your pdb contribution to the team :-)
Thanks :-)
ReplyDeleteI did mention python debugger :-P I didn't explicitly say I taught my team the same :-)
Words separated by hyphens in a sentence is something I always use to create an impact!
Thats my favorite too :-)
ReplyDeleteHey aksy! I always like to read ur posts. Hope u blog more often :)
ReplyDeleteAnd these hyphen separated words always remind me of Kripa :P I miss her!
Heehee!! Even Kri uses them??! Haha.. I use them often too.. And thanks.. I'll blog more often :P
ReplyDelete