This is a prototype of Maltese-Arabic pair. It has been built upon the existing Maltese-Hebrew pair with as little effort as possible; it means that not only the Maltese analyser has been reused, but also the Hebrew monodix, and some of the transfer rules.



The solution is ugly, but it works. Also, it was quite easy to write for several reasons:
- I had the Maltese analyser from mt-he pair
- Maltese and Arabic have similar grammar and syntax, they even share some ambiguities (for example, in Maltese verbs pres. 2 sg and pres. 3 sg f look the same, in Arabic pres. 2 sg m and pres. 3 sg f look the same)
- I didn't have to analyse Arabic, I only had to generate it.
Arabic words, when written without vocalisation (that's the standard way of writing), are often highly ambiguous. For example, different cases of a noun or different moods of a verb may have the same unvocalised form; ambiguities between parts of speech are also quite common. Luckily, I didn't have to think about disambiguation of Arabic.



Errors in apertium-mt-ar translation are explained in dev/story.ar-en.apertium.txt.



I have uploaded to dev directory files containing Maltese and Arabic "Where is James" story, apertium-mt-ar Arabic translation of the Maltese story, Google Translate Arabic translation of the Maltese story etc., see dev/README for the list of files.




Things that definitely should be written in a different way:

- mt.dix & ar.dix: possesive pronouns as tags in verbal entries. I have to see how 'possessive pronouns' are actually treated in mt.dix, when attached to verbs or prepositions.

- apertium-mt-ar.mt-ar.t1x: Maltese verbs have one 3 pl form, which may correspond in Arabic to 3 pl m form, 3 pl f form or 3 dualis form. I have written a rule translating Maltese 3 pl to Arabic 3 du: a stupid choice, but 100% justified from the point of view of the "Where is James" story.




Things I didn't do at all:

- I didn't have time to work on Maltese disambiguation, although there is only one place where this is a real problem: Maltese ħoss is either ħoss/ħoss<n><GD><sg> or ħass<vblex><imp><p2><sg>, the first analysis is correct, but the second one is chosen.


Some remarks on the Maltese analyser and mt-he in general:

- 'ma' is an immanent part of Maltese negation patterns and it should be treated as such. That's simply how it is, but it is especially important when translating to Arabic: in Hebrew, you can simply translate 'ma' to 'לא', in Arabic there are many negation particles and you have to know what is being negated in order to choose the right one. 

- many verbs go with prepositions and such prepositions should be taken into account in verbal entries (discontinuous multiwords approach may be the right one, I used a dirty simple multiwords solution). It is important because in such cases verb and preposition shouldn't be translated separately.

