Software of the Month Club 1997 February/Software of the Month Club 1997 February.iso/pc/dos/sri/edu/entfrn/readme

Text File | 1995-08-16 | 9.7 KB | 193 lines

                          FENTENT (Version 1.1)

A la fin de MANUAL.DOC il y a une introduction en francais aussi bien
que le mode d'emploi.

                             ABOUT FENTENT

FENTENT is a fully functional English-French / French-English translator,
a French-only version of the Entente program for translating among fourteen
languages. It is exactly like Entente, except it runs French only, and is
free.

This is not just another spreadsheet or word processor, but an entirely new
kind of program. As such, it requires a longer explanation than most.
But read on -- it's good!

FENTENT is meant for conversation, for saying I WANT TO RENT A BIKE - WHERE
BE A BIKE SHOP?, and getting an understandable reply. You can run it on your
desktop to talk to foreign visitors, or carry it with you in your palmtop
computer to help you get around when you go abroad. Because it uses only
singular nouns and only the infinitive of the verb (3 MAN ROB BANK YESTERDAY),
its grammar is often funny.  Yet it is nearly always understandable, and it
can be used to say almost anything, even to discuss complex and controversial
subjects.

Whenever an ambiguous word is used, the program beeps, and prompts the
"speaker" to tell it which meaning is wanted ("LIKE" IN WHICH SENSE?
1. I LIKE CANDY  2. JOHN IS LIKE SUSAN). Then the user must choose before
going on.  Thus you cannot use it to translate foreign documents or newspapers
(They contain conjugations and plurals, and there is no one to choose between
ambiguous meanings.) The program is for conversation only, with both parties
present, or for printing out (or E-mailing) an informal letter to a friend.
For these purposes, though, it is very good.

It differs from word translators, which give little or no clue to the meanings
of ambiguous words and translate a word at a time, making them agonizingly
slow for conversation. It differs from phrase translators in that they have
only a few stock cliches ("Boy, take the bags to the car"-- as though bellhops
ever did anything else, or had to be told this!)

FENTENT differs from document translators such as French Assistant (TM)
because they require you to write a full file on a word processor, then
switch to them, then have them quess the meanings of ambiguous words
(and computers are notoriously poor at this!), then tell them which person,
mood, and tense you want for each verb, and then at last they'll produce a
beautiful, grammatical translation --"Help!  My car is on fire!" -- which
the foreigner may read, provided he hasn't left or died in the meantime...
Such programs are meant for documents, and they're good for documents, much
better than the Entente programs. But only Entente is good for conversations,
only Entente covers most of the world with fourteen major languages, and only
Entente allows any pair of people (eg. a Pole and a Korean) to converse on any
topic.

Entente gives you about the same communication ability as a fourth year
university "A" student fresh out of class, but in fourteen languages instead
of just one, and after ten minutes of studying its rules, instead of four
years of classes. Entente aims to be the long-sought grail of artificial
intelligence, a Universal Translator.

Not everyone will like Entente.  Internet people may be offended that it
writes in all caps (BUT IT ISN'T SHOUTING AT YOU, IT'S JUST THAT THE LOWER
CASE IS USED FOR THE FOREIGN FONTS SUCH AS RUSSIAN AND ARABIC. Foreigners
must tolerate even greater afronts, such as stand-alone letters instead of
properly connected script, but most people quickly get used to such things,
and are tolerant once they understand the necessity.) Other people may be
too rigid to accept foreign word orders and the lack of conjugations,
for the lack of grammar does grate at first. But if you have the flexibility
to laugh at these quirks and go on, then Entente will let you talk to the
whole world.

The FENTENT freeware version allows you to evaluate the idea for yourself,
and enables you to converse with two hundred million speakers of French
in the process!

                        USING FENTENT

All the files take only about 300K bytes, and the document is just 31 pages.
(Furthermore, only the one page of Translator Instructions and the three
pages of Practice Sentences really have to be read.)

The program has only six commands (three important ones) and is easy to learn.
The commands needed "to make it work enough to play with it" appear on the
first screen of the program, but for satisfactory use you must spend five
minutes reading Translator Instructions, Practice Sentences, and A Session
Using Entente, all in MANUAL.DOC (the full document and instructions.)
To view this, you may either type EDIT MANUAL.DOC, TYPE MANUAL.DOC|MORE,
or PRINT MANUAL.DOC.

To run FENTENT type FENT (enter). FENTENT will work too, though not quite as
smoothly.

HP100/200LX:  For small memories, copy to the HP only the files starting with
 "F". eg.  COPY F*.*   .  This way you avoid copying the manual, README, etc.
Set working RAM to 556k (more is fine if you have more than 1 meg RAM).  To
set memory, from the opening menu press & S (Setup) Menu O (Options) and S
(System) , which should display Volume, Contrast, and Memory.  TAB down to
Memory, use the cursor keys to adjust, Enter, and Enter again to restart.
To run FENTENT, quit the System Manager by pressing  & menu A T and Enter,
go to the \ENT directory, and type FENT (Enter). The program should start and
display the first menu in about 30 seconds. Note that you cannot quit Sys.
Manager via D or the DOS icon.  This leaves the S.M. running in the background
and taking up 200k so Entente can't run -- you'll simply get the message
"Cannot execute Entente." And, if you get "File not found" or "Input past end
of file", that's probably because there wasn't room in RAM Disk to unpack the
vocabulary -- you must have  about 130k free and may need to delete other
programs, memos etc -- a one meg memory is small. To return to System Manager,
type 100 (Enter).

                 FENTENT COMPARED TO OTHER ENTENTE PROGRAMS

FENTENT has all the features of the full Entente program for English to
French. The full program comes with a larger, printed manual. It is also
available with vocabularies for Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin, with both Mainland
and Taiwan alphabets), French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese (Romaji
and Hiragana alphabets), Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian
(Yugoslavian), and Spanish.


Entente II is a similar program that translates between any pair of the
above languages (including English).  For example, it can translate between
Hungarian and Arabic, or French and Russian.

Current prices as of August, 1995 are: Entente, with your choice of foreign
language, $74.95. Entente II, with any pair of languages, $94.95.
Additional languages, which work with either program (but NOT with FENTENT!!),
$34.95 each. Prices subject to change; full refund within a year for any
reason. These prices are discounted from current retail prices of $79.95,
$99.95, and $39.95 because shareware users cost us nothing for advertising.

To order Entente or Entente II, or for more information, see the file
ORDER.ENT or write :

                        Entente Corporation
                        1441 Mariposa Ave.
                        Boulder, CO 80302
                        USA

                        CHANGES IN THIS VERSION

This is the first released version.


                               FILE LIST


The following files should unpack from FENTENT.ZIP.  If any are missing or
the wrong size, the program may not run right or there may have been a
virus added. (But, alas, the villains who write viruses could also alter
this file to show that the virused file was the right size!  So to be safe,
always run a virus check. Note to villains: Do not remove this warning...)


FRGLOB.EXE      68734 Main Vocabulary (Not user modifiable)
FREXTRA            348 Extra vocabulary you or others may add, so size may vary.
MANUAL.DOC    86151 Instruction Document.  If you understand everything,
                      you need not keep this cluttering your hard disk.
                      Handy to have, but not needed to run program.
CHECKIT.EXE     44684 Used to check syntax of extra vocabulary added to SEXTRA
ORDER.ENT        3061 English Order Form, not required to run program.
FEN1GLOB.EXE    26665 English vocabulary, not user modifiable
FORDER.ENT       3061 English Order Form, not required to run program.
FRORDER.ENT      3082 French Order Form, not required to run program.
FENTENT.EXE    126086 The Program
FENT.BAT         1243 Starts the program
FILE_ID.DIZ       826 Description, For BBS operators
MANUAL.DOC      86058 Instruction Document.  If you understand everything,
                      you need not keep this cluttering your hard disk.
                      Handy to have, but not needed to run program.
README           9898 This document, not needed to run the program.

                  Working Files Produced by Running Program

CHK        (any size)  A file created if you run CHECKIT.
ENTMSG.TXT (any size)  Default name of text file created if session is written
                       to a file.


                        CONTACTING ENTENTE

You may contact Entente by mail at:

                        Entente Corp.
                        1441 Mariposa Ave
                        Boulder, CO 80302
                        USA

-- or by e-mail at:
                        [e-mail]

-- or by phoning:
                        [phone]  (USA)