Dear Professor Zydenbos,

Just for the record: I shared this article not because I think that there is anything worthwhile about it - it seemed so obviously flawed that I didn't think that needed pointing out. I do however think it is a good article to know about - the whole 'Sanskrit and computers' story is one of the main ways in which Sanskrit is being talked about in public. We as Sanskritists are best placed to counter such myth and misinformation, and to do that, it helps to know what is out there. 

Mostly what *I* find sad is that there are so many unquestionably wonderful things about knowledge of Sanskrit that go happily ignored by a public apparently interested in Sanskrit - and instead, it's this misinformation that takes root. I'm always happy when I hear about initiatives such as Patrick's that try and do something against this - it would be such a shame to just cede the field to those with political/nationalist agendas.

All the very best,
      Antonia 

On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 at 04:27, Robert Zydenbos <zydenbos@uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
On 2020-04-12 21:43, Antonia Ruppel via INDOLOGY wrote:

> […] I've attached an article about Sanskrit use for NLP that I've
> sometimes seen referred to as 'proof' that this is a
> respectable/serious subject for academic study. (It is IEEE, but from
> the proceedings of a conference rather than one of their own
> (prestigious) publications.)

Such articles make me very sad.

Evidently none of the four authors, nor any editor before the article
was published, noticed that seven vibhaktis are mentioned (section V) --
and then comes a list of eight. This is only one of many problems I have
with this article. (Another one is “chez le garcon- in the boy”, another
is “a phrase in English language "I like apple" can suggest a brand of
Computer or a kind of fruit apple” (no!), another one is the total
irrelevance of section IX, especially as soon as we are dealing with
non-Indo-European languages.)

Nothing really good comes from such publications.

RZ

--
Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos
Institute of Indology and Tibetology
Department of Asian Studies
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University of Munich – LMU)
Germany


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