langetab

A langetab is a structured table used to represent lexical correspondences, translations, or annotations across two or more languages. It typically lists source language items alongside one or more target language equivalents and may include morphological, part-of-speech, sense, register, or usage notes. Langetabs are used to organize lexical data for linguistic analysis, lexicography, language teaching, and natural language processing (NLP) tasks.

Structurally, a langetab can be as simple as a two-column spreadsheet mapping words or phrases, or as complex as a multi-field database record that stores inflectional paradigms, glosses, example sentences, provenance, and confidence scores. Common file formats include CSV, TSV, Excel, and structured formats such as JSON or XML when interoperability and machine-readability are required. Metadata fields often record language codes, dialect information, source corpora, and licensing.

Applications of langetabs range from bilingual dictionary compilation and phrasebook creation to training data for machine translation and cross-linguistic research. In NLP, langetabs support alignment, vocabulary extraction, and supervised learning for translation and transliteration models. In descriptive linguistics, they facilitate comparative wordlists and typological studies by standardizing lexical entries for analysis.

Limitations include variability in granularity and sense disambiguation, potential biases from source materials, and challenges in representing multiword expressions and idioms. Best practices encourage clear metadata, provenance tracking, consistent use of language identifiers, and versioning to support reuse and reproducibility.

Related concepts include parallel corpora, interlinear glossed text, bilingual lexicons, and translation memory systems.