ABSTRACT
The
growth of globalization in the world today has increased the rate at which
people interact and integrate, thereby increasing the level of international
integration from interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects
of culture. Language differences therefore pose a major barrier to smooth
running of these processes. Therefore there is need for existence of system
that will help translate between languages. English is a West Germanic language
which has become the lingual Franca in Nigeria and 53 other countries.
Therefore vital information are written and spoken in English language in
Nigeria. Meanwhile,Yoruba language is lagerly spoken in Nigeria with over 40
million speakers in the south-western part of the country and also in parts of
Benin republic. This research deals with the translation of English text to Yoruba
text using rule based method. Twenty two rules were formulated for the
translation which is specified using context free grammar. A bilingual
dictionary dataset containing English words and the corresponding translation
in Yoruba language was used. The research model was implemented with ASP.net
and C# programming languages. The translator was evaluated to have accuracy of
90.5%.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
English
language is the Nigerian lingua franca which is commonly spoken among tribes in
the country. This has therefore posed a threat to the survival of indigenous
Nigerian languages. Consequently, most children cannot speak their mother
tongue. Therefore, experts are agitated that if a child cannot speak his or her
mother tongue today, there is probaility that in the next 20 to 25 years the
sons and daughters of the child may lose the language[1]. This implies that in
the next 50 years or more, the fate of Nigerian languages such as Yoruba, would
be close to near extinction. The recent policy of Nigeria Federal Ministry of
Education that made the study of indigineous languages optional in the Senior
Secondary Schools do not help matters[1].This research provides a means of
preventing extinction of Yoruba language. Also it helps in the flow of globilization
by developing a web-based user friendly English to Yoruba Machine Translation
System. This system is easily accessible to learning and to teaching the
indigenes and anyone interested in Yoruba language. The translator is user friendly
and English words are easily translated to Yoruba words. More so, it assists in
understanding the Yoruba language with English language.
Yoruba
is a dialect (natively ede Yoruba) of West Africa with over 25 million speaker.
The traditional area, “Yoruba Land”, Benin and Togo. Yoruba is a Niger-Congo
language spoken in West Africa. The number of speakers was estimated around 20
million in this 1990’s and Togo and among other communities in other parts of
Africa, Europe and America.
A
dictionary (also called word stock, word reference, wordbook, lexicon or
vocabulary) is a collection of words in one or more specific language, often
listed alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages),
with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations and
other information or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in
another , also known as a lexicon.
1.1
BRIEF HISTORY OF YORUBA
The
Yoruba group assumed to have developed out of in differentiated Volta-Niger
populations by the 1stmillennium BC. Settlement of early Yoruba speakers are
assumed to correspond to those found in the wider Niger are from about the
4th century BC, especially at Ife.
Standard
Yoruba has its origin in 1850’s when Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Africa
Bishop. Published a Yoruba grammar and started his translation of the bible.
The
various Yoruba dialects in Yoruba land of Nigeria can be classified into the
major dialects area; North-WPA Yoruba (NWYU) Abeokuta, Ibadan, Oyo, Ogun and
Lagos(Eko) areas.
1.2
Statement of the problem
The
existing system of Yoruba translator has the following drawbacks:
·
Error
in translating Yoruba words.
·
Difficulty
in identifying a good translator
1.3
AIMS AND OBJECTIVE
v To
allow user to know the correct meaning of a particular Yoruba word.
v To
train learners/user in the use of electronics dictionary.
v To
help user/learner in knowing the proper spelling of words.
v To
help students develop a more natural command of Yoruba.
v To
make user knowledge to be increased along with his/her Yoruba dialect.
v It
could be a guide as to know particular word should be used.
v To
make user to develop autonomy and confidence in himself/herself.
v To
enable students to understand the meaning of words quickly and almost effortlessly.
1.3
Scope
of the study
The
existing system is done manually, it makes record keeping difficult this method
has exhibited some loop holes and it is against this loop holes that this work
was carried out, the study is also undertaken to produce a system which will
address the loophole and co-operate need of the Yoruba translating system.
1.4
Significance
of the study
The
aim of my project is to provide a machine translator for the English and Yoruba,
users information will be stored in the system for easy retrieval.
1.5
Limitation
of the study
Developing
an automated Yoruba translator with the above capabilities entails a lot of
challenges and certainly some limitations.
i.
Time
Constraints – a research project as big as this requires
good time frame for proper research.
ii.
Lack of Materials- Most
of the (books, articles, reports, and journals) on the topic of this research
lacks authorship thereby making it difficult to reference them.
iii.
Financial
Constraints- Money serves as a back bone to all research
work. Because there was no grant from anybody, this was really stressful.