Web Metaphysics between Logic and Ontology

TheTraduxio Project as an example

License: CC-by-nc-nd Attribution- Non Commercial - No Derivs 2.0 France

WWW2012 ConferenceLyon, April 16-20 2011PhiloWeb Workshop

Philippe Lacour –ENS Paris

Content

Content

Thinking the Web

• The Web: a genuine object of just a fashion?• From a general to a precise point of view • Two possible orientations: logic or ontology• Questioning the ontological question:

semantics• Unveiling the unconscious bias in the way we

frame the problem

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Ontology (so they say)

• Multiplication of ontologies• Confusion: metaphysics or misconception• A historical perspective: logical positivism• The Logical tradition: lexical semantics• The Rhetorical / hermeneutical tradition• From ontology to semantics

Content

A logical (semantic) inquiry

• Berners Lee’s Web: positivist vision• Semantic Web as a socio-semantic Web• Interpretation is not secondary• Not a layer cake but a triangle: documents,

interpretation, intersubjectivity• The entlightening case of translation

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A logical (semantic) inquiry

• G.-G. Granger and the dream of contemporary reason: « create machines that could produce singularities »

• E.g.: automatic translation• Two cases of machine translation

(grammatical, statistical rules)• Singularity as the sign of creativity• Translate from a text to another text

The TraduXio Project

• A computer assisted translation device• Online, free, open source• Meant for multilingual translation• Aiming at precision: concorder• Collaborative: a digital workbench• Building reflexive corpora• Ontological problems are semantic ones

Beyond the language pair system

The « star » stystem (e.g. Google translator’s toolkit)

Japanese Version

Korean Version

Russian Version

Turkish Version

French Version

Original Version

(English)

The Google Translator’s Toolkit

Originality

1. Beyond the language-pair system

Literature/Zulu

Version B

Version C

Version A

Récupération et encodageMoteur de recherche

Hamlet translated into German/Spanish/French

Multiple Translation from the Qur’an

Originality

2- Relevant suggestions

20th c.

Poetry

Africa

TraitementTraitement

Multilingual Concordance

Relevant suggestions

Concordance : reverse

Originality

3- The collaborative spirit

• Revision History• Managing Texts privileges• Social tagging• Discussions forums• Wiki, social networks…

Privileges Management

Custom Privileges Management

Tagging a Text

Content

Web Philosophy as Psychoanalysis of Digital Culture

• A web of Meaning: documents, not datas• Semantic unconscious, below the ontological

concern• Socio-semantic Web, interpretive semantics• Critical role of philosophy: not kantian but a

cultural psychoanalysis, which also goes beyond Bachelard’s psychoanalysis of knowledge

• Automatic translation misconceives the role of translation in the philosophy of language

Follow TraduXio

• « TIC, traduction, collaboration: vers de nouveaux laboratoires de translocalisation culturelle », Meta Journal for Translators, 55(4), december 2010 (now online).

• “Towards a Collaborative Platform for Cultural Texts Translators”, BÉNEL Aurélien and LACOUR Philippe. In Pierre MARET ed. Virtual Community Building and the Information Society: Current and Future Directions. Hershey (Pennsylvania): IGI Global (January 2011).

Thank you

http://traduxio.hypertopic.org