ATs and cATs explained

... and you are absolutely sure you understand what are ATs and cATs.

It is quite important that you understand what you are downloading. Not everything that looks like a dictionary is a dictionary! ATs and cATs are special lists of translations used by people who create dictionaries to make their work easier. ATs or cATs lists cannot be used as free dictionaries. Not before they are checked and corrected by people who know both languages.

ATs are long lists of translations that are created from A-B-C relation (A, B, C are three languages). Lists of ATs are usually very long and contain all translations that can be created from translations in A-B and A-C dictionaries. The fact that list of ATs contains all translations that can be created causes also that among ATs there are many incorrect translations. Lists of ATs are definitely to be used only for validating by people who create dictionaries.

There are many incorrect translations in a list of ATs. If there would be simple way to remove all incorrect translations from list of ATs creating free dictionaries would be matter of minutes. The trouble is we do not know any simple method which removes the incorrect translations yet. However we are able to use special method to filter out large number of incorrect translations by subtracting two different lists of ATs. Resulting subset of ATs is called cATs (cleaned automatic translations). There is always less cATs than there is ATs for two normal languages. cATs are more precise than ATs but there is always possibility that there will be mistakes and incorrect translations among cATs. So not even cATs can be used as dictionary. Not before they are checked by people who know both languages and remove all mistakes. cATs lists are very valuable for people who know both languages because they can validate these translations very quickly. After cATs lists are checked and mistakes corrected they will be released as real free dictionaries. But not before they are checked!

Most secure way if you plan to use ATs or cATs for something is talking directly with authors of these lists. Also if you find a project or program which uses these lists and does not warn others that these lists are not dictionaries you should contact authors of these lists.

Do you plan to use translations in ATs and cATs lists as dictionaries before they are released as actual free dictionaries by people who will check and correct the translations in these lists?