Ubiquity in Firefox: Focus on Japanese
One of the eventual goals of the Ubiquity project is to bring some of its functionality and ideas to Firefox proper. To this end, Aza has been exploring some possible options for what that would look like (round 1, round 2). All of his mockups, however, use English examples. I’m going to start exploring what Ubiquity in Firefox might look like in different kinds of languages. Let’s kick this off with my mother tongue, Japanese.1
今後多様な言語に対応したFirefox内のUbiquityを検討していきますが、その中でも今日は日本語をとりあげます。後日日本語で同じ内容を投稿するつもりです。^^ 日本語でのコメントも大歓迎です！
What commands look like in Japanese
Japanese is not only just a verb-final language but it is strongly head-final, meaning it has postpositions instead of prepositions, direct objects come before verbs, and adjectives precede nouns. In terms of how it identifies its arguments, every argument has a postposition/case marker (called a particle in the Japanese literature) which marks its role in the sentence.
A couple common particles we’ll look at in this example include -を (-o) which marks the direct object (accusative case, you might say) and -に (-ni) which acts like English “to” (dative case). The example sentence we’ll look at today is:
| ケーキを | ブレアに | 送って | (ください) |
| kēki-o | burea-ni | okuʔte | kudasai |
| cake.ACC | Blair.DAT | send.IMP | “please” |
| “Please send a cake to Blair.” | |||
(Note: ʔ is a glottal stop. ACC=accusative, DAT=dative, and IMP=imperative form.)
That final ください is often dropped in very casual speech and, as it adds no new information, we’ll assume today that the user will not enter it. Finally, Japanese doesn’t use spaces in their orthography, so the actual input would be “ケーキをブレアに送って”.
Mockup 1: Particle identification
One of the major hurdles in working with Japanese is that there are no spaces between the words. The natural first step is to split the sentence up into words, but this is a very difficult problem in NLP which big name research groups actively work on.
Fortunately, however, in “Solving the ‘It’ Problem” Aza suggests that, when we encounter ambiguity in our input, we can go ask the user. Great minds think alike, and computer scientist Jean E. Sammet suggested the same idea way back in 1953:
Using English [or any other natural language] definitely involves the requirement for the computer (or more accurately its programming system) to query the user about any possible ambiguity.
Parsing a sentence into words, in the limited context of Ubiquity, is really about identifying the particles which mark the end of each argument. Here’s a mockup of an application of the Sammet-Raskin Method to this problem:
Pros: This completely takes care of the word-breaking problem, with minimal arbitration from the user. The parser knows exactly what arguments it’s dealing with and the visual feedback means the user won’t be surprised by the parse.
Cons: Most of the particles/postpositions we’d have to deal with are a single character, so they may show up pretty often within words, in which case it would be quite annoying to have to press escape after each one.
An even smarter system, when wanting to mark a character as a particle, would first check to see that the argument (before the particle) is a valid argument type for that particle. If the check fails, it doesn’t have to bother with suggesting that character as a particle. This may cut down on the false positives.
Smart suggestions: what works, what doesn’t
One of the key suggestions in Aza’s mockups include a way to choose the prepositions while entering your arguments, based on the current verb.
For example, here, the translate command accepts a direct object, a to-object, and a from-object, so little to and from markers magically show up on the right side, making the appropriate prepositions (and by extension the appropriate arguments) discoverable. I think this line of thinking is a really good one, at least for English.
In a verb-final language, however, you enter the arguments first and then the verb, making this strategy of suggesting appropriate arguments impossible. Note that in the user-contributed spreadsheet of how languages identify their arguments we see that about a quarter of the languages we looked at are verb-final—that is, with Subject-Object-Verb canonical word order.
Instead of seeing this as a disadvantage, however, let’s see what verb-final order allows us to do.
Mockup 2: A different kind of suggestion
Not all verbs allow for every different kind of particle. For example, it doesn’t make sense to have a -に (-ni, “to” or dative) argument for a verb like 検索して (kensaku-shite, “search for”). In English we used this to suggest different types of arguments given a specific verb. In a verb-final language, we could do this backwards.
Pros: This makes verbs highly discoverable, given a certain argument structure. For example, if you enter a few arguments, like a direct object, a “to” argument, and a “from” argument, it’ll suggest verbs that will do something to an object from somewhere to somewhere else. This way, you can easily try out verbs you didn’t even know existed. It’ll only give you verbs appropriate for your arguments, reducing the chance of writing a an infelicitous command.
Cons: Without knowing what kinds of actions are available, it may be difficult to know what kinds of arguments to enter in the first place. If you have a specific verb or service you want to use it may be counterintuitive or downright tricky to start by guessing the right set of arguments.
In addition, from a technical point of view, this requires much of the prediction algorithms in English Ubiquity to run backwards. Ideally, there would be a closed (predetermined) class of particles and a predefined set of noun types. Verbs would not be able to define their own modifiers and noun classes as easily or freely as they can now.
Conclusion
The properties and challenges of Japanese grammar require that we not try to outright copy the English behavior but to think about what really makes sense in that language and that may be an important lesson as we move toward designing a localizable Ubiquity. Please post your questions and criticisms of this design or post your own mockups!
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Happy International Mother Language Day! ^^ ↩
Related posts:
- Three ways to argue over arguments
- Ubiquity Parser: The Next Generation Demo
- Ubiquity in Portuguese
- Writing commands with semantic roles
- Ubiquity i18n: questions to ask
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: argument structure, arguments, design, Firefox, interface, Japanese language, linguistics, mockup, Mozilla Planet, parser, ubiquity, verbs
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February 20th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Hi, Japanese language has not sequenced order. So, I think the parser should be oriented with their particles.
In addition, how do you think about ラーメン command? http://mozilla.l10n.jp/~mar/ubiquity/nakanoRamen_...
February 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I looks like Japanese is indeed a very interesting laguage.
Probably I should try to learn it =)
February 20th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
In reading this I am asking myself, is it really that important to try to abide by another language's word order rules? Are we doing this for the sake of intuitive use only, i.e. designing the text input system as close to the use of the foreign language, hoping that a new user will be able to use the system right off the bat?
Would it be so bad if Ubiquity didn't care about other language's word orders and imposed the order used in its native tongue - English?
How difficult would it be for non-English users of Ubiquity to adapt to that imposed word order? Are we afraid we'd turn users away if we made them adapt?
Sure it would be nice to provide a near-natural-language interface, but isn't this overkill?
Look at programming languages: I may be ignorant, but I'm not aware of a country that has translated a programming language into their own native tongue. Is there a Japanese version of JavaScript, a French dialect of C?
However, looking at the implications of the reverse word order paradigm that suddenly make verbs the (more) discoverable items instead of its arguments brings up an interesting point.
If the arguments are entered first and the verb becomes a discoverable entity, that could make it much easier for new users who aren't familiar with the system's vocabulary yet. But, given one or two arguments I would think that the user would expect Ubiquity to prompt him with a list of applicable verbs based on the type of argument(s), not necessarily their declinations.
For instance, if I were to first enter an address as an argument in a reverse order interface, Ubiquity should come up with the verbs/nouns "map" and perhaps "directions." This would be perfect if the user didn't know the correct Ubiquity word to map the address. Though, this poses a new problem, namely how to teach Ubiquity to interpret strings as addresses. Or how to teach Ubiquity to interpret strings as anything, since it would have to offer a set of applicable verbs based on a given argument.
If this reverse word order model turned out to be indeed much more helpful for the newbie Ubiquity user, then it should be made available in the English and all other language versions as well.
Of course, this would complicate things even more, not just from the developer's point of view.
So, I am wondering if the interface should not be kept as is: simple and straight-forward across all languages.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Oh, one other thing.
Can you provide instructions on how to make Firefox display the Japanese characters correctly? Currently, I see squares filled with 4-digit hex numbers, which I believe represent a character's unicode?
I'm using Firefox 3.0.6 on Windows.
February 20th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Mockup 1 feels too open ended and looks like you'll have to support more varieties of sentence structures. For example if you can do 「ケーキをブレアに送る」then it's equally correct to do「ブレアにケーキを送る」
I think Mockup 2 has the advantage of suggesting a command structure (structure makes it easy to be read by machine) disguised as autocomplete/suggestions (which is good for the user because it means less typing more opportunity for discovery).
"Without knowing what kinds of actions are available, it may be difficult to know what kinds of arguments to enter in the first place."
How about bringing the service parameter to the beginning of the sentence. If 「Amazon」 is the first word that gets typed is the service then you can deduce that the verb at the end of the sentence is going to be 「買う」or「検索」. I know this makes parsing the sentence difficult because the system is going to have to have different logic than English but isn't it good news that everything between the service name and verb is in the same order?
I have a few example comparisons between English (with verb first, service names last) commands and Japanese (with service name first, verb last) to show how what is in between is the same order: http://keisukeomi.com/ubiquity-in-firefox/japanes...
The image also shows how the system can encourage the user to type in commands with a specific order while keeping the perception of free-form input. The idea is that the grey text would be displayed at key points of input and would act as a prompt/reminder for what should come next.
I think there are other changes to Ubiquity that needs to be though about so it feels native to Japanese users.
1) ウビクイテー？ ユビクイティー？ The name "Ubiquity" sounds great in English but it's just so awkward in Japanese. It's not a common word that you learn in school (I assume) so no one knows what it means too. I think if mass adoption in Japan (and other parts of the world where "Ubiquity" isn't part of their vocabulary) is a goal then an alternative name will go a long way.
2) The 変換候補 panel that gets displayed when entering Japanese gets drawn behind the Ubiquity panel. Maybe this is a system-wide problem with panels in Firefox? See screenshot here: http://slashcolon.com/wordpress/2008/09/08/ubiqui...
That being said, this is looking great! I'm enjoying following the design process for a feature that requires thinking about localization at such a fundamental level. I feel localization is only skin deep for most software/webapps because teams assume that replacing text strings and images is enough. With Ubiquity, you have no choice but to explore how much of the core functionality has to be customized for each local to make it appear native to whomever is using it.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
ラーメンCommandっていいよね！日本に行くと絶対使うよ。
February 21st, 2009 at 4:05 am
I didn't make this clear in the above mockup, but a sentence with the -に argument before the -を would work just as well for this system.
As for the ラーメン、 that's a really interesting question. This also has to do with how grammaticalized different services are as verbs… for example, in English you can "map" things or "google" things and, traditionally, you can't do either as verbs… you must "find on a map" or "search with google" (although マッピングする for map can be heard more and more so I used it in this mockup.) This also has to do with Jono's suggestion for "overlord verbs" if you're interested.
February 21st, 2009 at 1:57 pm
> a sentence with the -に argument before the -を would work just as well for this system.
https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/trac/ticket/425
I know this well. The ticket #425 is my post.
My point is, current JP parser system doesn't handle each particles. It's just used for separating a given sentence. All JP commands for JP paser must indicate arguments by using "modifier" (can't use direct input). There is no compatibility in same command for each languages.
IMHO, the "NULL" particle is needed to solve compatibilitiy problem.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
[…] | Tags: internationalization, linguistic UI, ubiquity | Over at his blog, Mitcho has some very sharp thoughts about localizing Ubiquity to verb-final languages such as […]
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
[…] mitcho > blog > Ubiquity in Firefox: Focus on Japanese (tags: ubiquity) […]
February 24th, 2009 at 2:16 am
I know that this has less relevance in verb order, but there seems to be a hidden technical issue regarding the input of Asian languages on any text field in Firefox. The text field is not aware of any new input from the IME until the IME commits the text, and that may well cause the problem of Ubiquity not being able to scan what text is inputted into the URL bar (or whatever text field it's using) when the user is using an IME.
There is also a problem with keystrokes like Esc, because Esc usually clears the input buffer of the IME. I've seen the same problem in Songbird's online translation system; it was designed to save the current string and jump to editing the next string when the user hits the Enter key, interfering with the IME committing the input buffer. I'm not sure why is it that these keystroke events leak to the text fields while the text in the input buffer does not.
In any case, it would be fun to see if it is productive to force Chinese into OVS order using a (highly unnatural) passive voice. I talked to a native German speaker a few days ago and she and I were chatting about how it was interesting that German speakers usually place the main verb at the end of a sentence, almost creating an anticipating effect.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:56 am
@kourge, there may be some differences in behavior between platforms and IMEs… on my machine here (OS X Kotoeri on Firefox 3.1) Ubiquity recognizes and can start parsing text which hasn't left the Japanese conversion yet. As for the escape key, though, you're right that that may cause some trouble. We'll definitely need to look into these issues with different IME/OS/language combinations in the future if there is to be a future for this kind of quick feedback cycle.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:00 am
Hmm… not sure about this… did you try manually setting the text encoding? It should be UTF8.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:10 am
Hi Georg, thanks for your comments. ^^
You can find some of my thoughts on trying to approach this "natural syntax" here. The upshot is that if Ubiquity is to gain a wider audience, we don't want to have to force users into a partial English, especially for users who have no prior knowledge of English and are not interested in learning a "programming language." Whether this is a viable goal or not is another issue… but one that we won't resolve unless we try. ^^ There have indeed been efforts to make different language-based programming languages… there's some info on that on wikipedia.
I agree that the verb-suggestion based on nouns is an interesting model, and that if fruitful it should also apply to English and other verb-initial (or at least not verb-final) languages. Jono points out that the English parser in Ubiquity indeed already has this to a certain extent… I encourage you to check it out.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:29 am
Interesting, I'm on OS X, 10.5.5, Kotoeri, Firefox 3.0.6, and the URL bar, for example, can't find whatever is in my history until I commit the text. The same applies to OpenVanilla, and I'm too lazy to try Hanin. I'm guessing that it could be that you're using Firefox 3.1.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Oops, I forgot to reply to that thread and replied to the post instead.
March 14th, 2009 at 6:08 am
[…] few weeks ago I made some visual mockups of how Ubiquity could look and act in Japanese. Part of this proposal was what I called “particle identification”: that is, immediate […]
March 18th, 2009 at 3:19 am
[…] (1) the use of overlord verbs, (2) writing verbs by semantic roles, and (3) better suggestions for verb-final languages and other argument-first contexts. I’m happy to say that I’ve spent some time putting a […]
April 6th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Japanese is a complicated, but indeed abeutiful language.
April 7th, 2009 at 7:31 am
[…] input first-class citizens of Ubiquity, improving their suggestions in particular to the benefit of verb-final languages. Arguments will be split up and tested against different noun types before a verb is even entered […]
May 17th, 2009 at 10:32 am
[…] Ubiquity in Firefox: Focus on Japanese […]
July 9th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
[…] 2 also adds better argument-first suggestions, inspired by some earlier thoughts on Ubiquity in Japanese. Ubiquity will now start to parse arguments in the input even if a verb isn’t found, and […]
July 28th, 2009 at 3:27 am
Firefox 3.0.6, and the URL bar, for example, can't find whatever is in my history until I commit the text. The same applies to OpenVanilla, and I'm too lazy to try Hanin. I'm guessing that it could be that you're using Firefox 3.1.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Off course Japanese one of the key and interesting and Japanese also good market in world.
August 14th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I talked to a native German speaker a few days ago and she and I were chatting about how it was interesting that German speakers usually place the main verb at the end of a sentence, almost creating an anticipating effect.
August 14th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Enter key, interfering with the IME committing the input buffer. I'm not sure why is it that these keystroke events leak to the text fields while the text in the input buffer does not.
August 14th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I am certain this is a very unique piece of work. The Japanese grammar and sentence structures are quite complex in written forms, and great to see you take on the challenge. electronics store usa
August 17th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
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August 17th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
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August 17th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
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September 14th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Japanese language is very tough to understand and frame. Wedding Dresses Wedding Flowers Vera Wang Wedding Dresses Mori Lee Prom Dresses
September 16th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Japanese language is very interesting to learn but at the same time it is very hard..Thanks for the great article
September 16th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Learning Japanese can be a bit difficult but how difficult it will be in programming..Thanks for this great learning tutorial
September 21st, 2009 at 3:55 am
I'm on OS X, 10.5.5, Kotoeri, Firefox 3.0.6, and the URL bar, for example, can't find whatever is in my history until I commit the text. The same applies to OpenVanilla, and I'm too lazy to try Hanin. I'm guessing that it could be that you're using Firefox 3.1.
September 29th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
I have been studying Japanese for a long time. I think its the most beautiful and interesting language in the world.
ありがとうございます
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
you're right that that may cause some trouble. We'll definitely need to look into these issues with different IME/OS/language combinations in the future if there is to be a future for this kind of quick feedback cycle. link building services
October 4th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I once though of learning Japanese when I was early twenties but no more. Now I don't work in Japanese company anymore. Time flies - 25 years.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Japanese is a complicated, but indeed abeutiful languages
October 6th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
A lot of Sites with japanese characters don't load for me =[
October 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I have been studying Japanese for a long time. I think its the most beautiful and interesting language in the world.
October 9th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I have been studying Japanese for a long time. I think its the most beautiful and interesting language in the world.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
It surely seems like it anyways! I am sure glad I'm not the one trying to get this figured out, I'd probably go insane.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form. The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure. It's takin' whatever comes your way, the good AND the bad
October 15th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
It's interesting to see this in another language, especially Japanese! Seems like getting this to work 100% will take a lot of time and patience.
October 17th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I look forwards ot a truly ubiquitous experience
October 20th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
This is something that I will find very useful, thanks!
October 21st, 2009 at 6:02 pm
I like the treaded arguement that the programming shouldn't necesssarily follow a english model, or translating from english to Japanese. How would it work if everything started from Japanese and moved on from there? Or at that point, would we be talking about an entirely different thing? Do you need to be able to back from English to Japanese and vise versa?
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Your site is very successful continuous tracking.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Thanks for sharing these info with us! I was reading something similar on another website that i was researching. I will be sure to look around more. thanks
November 4th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I am very happy to find a very good article related to firefox. Firefox is the leader of browsers on internet.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Thanks for share your thoughts. Great thinking, good post.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:40 am
A nice blog.i think that this session will take a good, hard look at everything that's good
November 12th, 2009 at 6:34 am
current JP parser system doesn't handle each particles. It's just used for separating a given sentence. All JP commands for JP paser must indicate arguments by using "modifier" (can't use direct input). There is no compatibility in same command for each languages.
IMHO, the "NULL" particle is needed to solve compatibility problem.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:47 am
that's really a fantastic post ! ! added to my favourite blogs list..
November 14th, 2009 at 8:30 am
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November 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Japanese language has not sequenced order. Japanese is indeed very interesting language. Probably I should try to learn it =)
November 26th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Why won't my Firefox browser automatically take me to a website by typing one word in the URL but others' Firefox will?
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:14 am
Thank you!
December 6th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Very interesting!
December 9th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
A friend of mine in high school was from Japan and tried their best to help me learn some Japanese. I tell you what, though… that is one hard language to learn. Give me Spanish any day!
December 14th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I now have your site bookmarked…your site always has great and interesting articles to read..thanks!
December 15th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Japanese is such a beautiful language as well as an ancient language. We have a large oriental population and it has been a pleasure to be in their company New Orleans Escorts
December 17th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I agree, and the country japan and also beautiful country!
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Ubiquity is an awesome tool for firefox! I'll share this with my Japanese friends!
December 29th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Wow, I sure would like to know the meaning behind the symbols. online canadian
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:14 pm
thank you
January 4th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
There are many Japanese words that have no literal translation to english. It is a very beautiful language however.
January 6th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Wow! Very nice!
January 13th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Me to trying to learn but can't find good language center in my country. That is why I am trying to learn language from online media. Can any suggest me the online Japanese Language Learning Website.
Thanks in Advance. Free Plant
January 13th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
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January 14th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
ラーメンCommandっていいよね！日本に絶対使うよ。
January 19th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Hadnt know that there is a tool like this…thanks for the nice read
January 20th, 2010 at 1:03 am
I have been brought up with two languages and had learned later two further ones. But all these are of European origin and I find it just amazing and fascinating how all the different languages worldwide do differ from each other.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Wow I never thought that there would be so much involved because of the Japanese language.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:47 am
I loved FIrefox very much i dont use any other browser
January 25th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
I desire to learn this language , actually just have to learn quickly weboptimization
February 1st, 2010 at 12:27 pm
ラーメっていいよね！日本に行くと絶対使うよ。
February 9th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Nice nice, thanks
February 13th, 2010 at 4:23 am
I gotta say Japanese is not easy to master especially the alphabet, but its well worth the effort
February 17th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
yes I like the treaded arguement that the programming shouldn't necesssarily follow a english model, or translating from eng to Japanese. How would it work if everything started from Japanese and moved on from there? Or at that point, would we be talking about an entirely different thing? Do you need to be able to back from English to Japanese and vise versa?
April 26th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Firstly I would like to thank you for some info you showed here. It is interesting to know. Also I like reading the conclusion you posted: "The properties and challenges of Japanese grammar require that we not try to outright copy the English behavior but to think about what really makes sense in that language and that may be an important lesson as we move toward designing a realizable Ubiquity". Furthermore, I am learning Japanese and I indeed like this language.