In Randa at the KDE Multimedia + Education sprint 2010 we presented the alpha version 0.6.0 of Ambaradan and extracted the actually included terminology from the Agrovoc Thesaurus by FAO to get a Parley vocabulary trainer file. Even if this was only a first test, now the information is around and people will want to know more.

Right now Ambaradan can be only used to search vocabulary. In the coming weeks and months more and more data will be availabe and it will become possible to edit data directly online.

For now let me describe you how to search with Ambaradan and what the various bits and pieces mean. It will help to get accustomed to this new tool.

Please note that it is written for Firefox 3.5 or higher as web browser. Right now it is the only browser to interpret html 5 code correctly.

Search with Ambaradan

Let's go to the Ambaradan website:

http://www.voxhumanitatis.net/ambaradan

and this is what you will see:

Not all information shown is relevant to all users, therefore let's just explain things step by step.

In the upper right corner you have the search field. In there we write the term we want to search for. Let's insert tree and then click on the search button. What comes out is the following:

Scrolling down you find loads of results, because Ambaradan searches ALL entries where the term tree is part of, also definitions for example. It seems to be the first entry that is relevant to us. At the moment of writing we have only Agrovoc data which is not really like a dictionary since it mixes with plurals and scientific Latin expressions, but it is a good test environment. Soon we will have better terminology online. So let's take a deeper look into the first search result Trees.

We simply click on Dive, right above the 100% written in front of Trees.  And that's what we get:

The first part called Profile inspector is relevant only for admins, so just do as if it was not there (for now we are keeping all visible, when things are complete you will not see all of it).

The translations to the various languages in this case are partly in plural and singular: this is what I meant before when I said that Agrovoc presents such entries. But let's look at single entries:

Chinese:

There you have the Chinese term 树. Under the term you have an audio player - at the time of writing there is a test recording which instead of the pronunciation of the translated word, if available it will be replaced by the correct pronunciation in a second stage. Under Language you find Standard Chinese the Script is identified as Simpified Chinese characters. The Original under Translation indicates that the Chinese translation derives directly from the English one we started from. If this was not the case an indication where the translation comes from would show up. Under Region you find AGROVOC region which means that this data is being maintained by Agrovoc itself. Under License you find which license the collection of terminology is attributed to - and really any, also All Rights Reserved is possible. In this case we have a specific Agrovoc license. Under Authority we have the maintainer of the data which here is Agrovoc itself.

For further information on these items, just click on them.

Now let's go back to the initial search result screen:

In future Ambaradan will allow you to save your search results and often some of the results you get should be excluded. You can depreciate these unwanted results by clicking on Drop, which you find right near Dive. This will be very helpful to recall searches you already did.

And with the note above you already know one part of what is coming soon: as soon as users can be created you will be able to save your searches, also in groups, this means that you can have an ordered list of searches you did, just like "sources" and then, even after quite some time, you can take them up again.

A second very relevant feature to further use the available terminology is an export button which will in a first stage export data in KVTML format, the one used by Parley to do vocabulary training, and then, step by step further export formats will be added.

Should you have questions, please let us know. We will extend this how-to according to your questions.