Section: New Results

Finite state formalisms for Egyptian Hieroglyphic transliteration

Participant : François Barthélemy.

The task of transliterating an Egyptian Hieroglyphic text into the latin alphabet was studied [20] , as a model problem to compare two finite-state formalisms: the first one is a cascade of binary transducers; the second one is a class of multitape transducers expressing simultaneous constraints, implemented using the Karamel language [62] . The two systems were compared regarding their expressivity and readability.

The first system tends to produce smaller machines, but is more tricky. On the other hand, the Karamel language provides a more abstract description of the forms, using an explicit tree structure and separating the different pieces of information on different tapes, according to semantic criteria. But the Karamel machine is much larger. Karamel is a high-level declarative formalism whereas non contextual rewrite rules are an efficient low-level language.