The Next Steps

Sicilian English

Let's translate Wikipedia!

There's a list of translations that you can correct at our user page. To request a translation, please leave a message in the discussion.

Over the past few years, we annotated a vocabulary list with proverbs, poetry and prose. We trained a translation model to translate between Sicilian, English and Italian. And now we have a dictionary for the 21st century.

But it's a small dictionary, not a big one.

I'd like to develop a better one, but I'm an economist, not a linguist. So I just did what an economist would do: I assembled a dataset. I hope it fills the need for an online dictionary until we can create a better one.

Most readers of this page will not be linguists either. Some might not even know Sicilian. But if they want to develop a Sicilian dictionary, then I want their help. And there's plenty that they can do to help.

For example, someone who only knows English can find articles in English Wikipedia or Italian Wikipedia that should be translated for Sicilian Wikipedia. And our machine can automatically translate those articles into Sicilian. The translations will not be perfect, but someone with a good knowledge of Sicilian can edit them to perfection.

Translating articles for Sicilian Wikipedia would give people from Southern Italy an opportunity to write (or re-write) their own history. And it would give them an opportunity to write and develop their language.

Writing in Sicilian develops the language and it develops text for language modeling, which can then be used to write more in Sicilian. It's a virtuous cycle. The more we write in Sicilian, the easier it becomes to write in Sicilian.

If you would like to write more in Sicilian, then I would love to hear from you. Send me an email at: eryk@napizia.com and let's find ways for you to get involved.

Copyright © 2018-2024 Eryk Wdowiak