Project Information
Team Captain: Ryan Peng
Team Size: 1
Grade Category: 10-12
Subject Area: Engineering/Computer Science
Project Type: Descriptive III
Language: English
Source of Project Idea:
The reason why this program was developed is to provide a reliable tool for bridging the gap between a text document written in an unknown language to the user and an instant translator. When using an instant translator, one must know the source and target languages. The target language is what the user wants the text document to be written in after translation. The source language is the language that the original text document is written in (before translation). Sometimes, the user may not know the source language. This program is designed to determine the source language. This project was inspired by the nuisances of guessing the source language of a document written in an unknown language.
Project Summary:
The purpose of this innovation project is to develop a program that will determine the language that a piece of text is written in with high accuracy and speed. The program should be able to take in text, scan through it, and output what it thinks the language the text is written in. During the onset of this project, I hypothesized that it was possible to create such a program and have that program be quick and accurate. I think that the program should take no more than 120 seconds to scan and should be at least 95% accurate in determining what language a document is written in. In order to evaluate the Language Recognition Program’s performance, several hundred excerpts of text were scanned with the program. These excerpts of text were written in several different languages. The results were recorded and compared against the true languages of the excerpts. Overall, the Language Recognition Program achieved an accuracy rating of 99.5%. The program handled the varied excerpts well; the excerpts were chosen from different styles of writing in order to test if the program could handle a variety of topics. In conclusion, the Language Recognition Program is an accurate and fast program. Two primary methods of language determination, word recognition and special character recognition, were integrated together to form a strong algorithm for determining the language of a document efficiently. It is a reliable tool that can help people translate and understand a document written in an unknown language.
Software Tools Used:
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Microsoft Office 2007
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Notepad
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Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
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Mozilla Firefox
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FileZilla FTP Client
Hardware Tools Used:
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Computers and their various devices...
Special Skills Used:
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Visual Basic 6.0 (Computer Programming) Skills
Awards:
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"Best (1st Place) Intermediate Engineering/Computer Science Project" at the Saskatoon Regional Science Fair 2008
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"Winner's Showcase (Top 6 Projects of the Whole Fair)" at the Saskatoon Regional Science Fair 2008
Past Virtual Science Fair Websites: