The translator is an early beta – suggestions for improving it are always welcome.
Basic instructions:
Load a .wordo file in WordBuilder.
Activate the translator tab. You’ll be asked to open or create a dictionary file (.wdic). The dictionary is saved every time a change is made.
Enter your source text in the top text area. Start with the text in plain English, I suppose. I took the first line of the babel text:
and all the earth had one language and one tongue
Press ctrl+t to translate. Unless you have words in your dictionary, you’ll get the source text copied to the lower area, but with each word in cursive, and in red. Words in cursive red have no translation in your dictionary.
and all the earth had one language and one tongue
If you notice something that can’t be translated directly word for word, you’ll have to work that out in your source text. You can use <base word>.<branch> for conjugation/inflection, <base word>.!<mark> to get a mark, and <base word>.*<rule name> to execute a rule.
For Esolanean, I’ve decided to have the determinate form be a branch of the base word, so I had to modify my source text slightly. Also, I figured I’d use the word ‘world’ rather than ‘earth’:
and all world.Determinate had one language and one tongue
Now the translation looks like:
and all world had one language and one tongue
To translate a word, right click it and choose “Add word”. The word editor dialog pops up. After creating a useful word, click ok and try translating again. I got lucky and found ‘eir’ for world:
and all eirt had one language and one tongue
Keep doing this for each word, and you’ll eventually have built yourself a dictionary with a lot of words, as well as a fine translation of a text.