GIZA++ Guide

A newer and easier guide for Ubuntu/Debian users is available at http://blog.vee-u.com/2008/03/02/giza_pp/

• Firstly, we have to prepare 2 text files, which each lines are identical. For example,
  
  tha.txt:
  ฉัน กิน ข้าว
  ฉัน ไป โรงเรียน
  
  eng.txt:
  I eat rice.
  I go to school.
  
• Secondly, generating vocabulary files and correspondences file, using plain2snt.out. For example plain2snt eng.txt tha.txt. It must generate eng_tha.snt, eng.vcb and tha.vcb.
• Writing configuration file. For example,
  
  config:
  outputfileprefix play_giza
  sourcevocabularyfile eng.vcb
  targetvocabularyfile tha.vcb
  c eng_tha.snt
  
• Finally, running GIZA++ using this command. "GIZA++ config". Then the final result must be in the file play_giza.A3.final. (be careful if you use Mac OS X)

GIZA++: XML output

An alignment output from GIZA++ is in special format. It looks nice and readable but I just don't want to write a parser. Hence I modified GIZA++ to output XML instead. [Download the patch]

GIZA++ on Mac OS X (HFS+)

Today I find that foobar.a3.final and foobar.A3.final are the same file on HFS+ (the file system are used in my iBook). Now I know why foobar.A3.final in my working directory is not the same as what mentioned in GIZA++'s README. A workaround is as follow:

diff -Nuar GIZA++-v2/model3.cc GIZA++-v2-osx/model3.cc
--- GIZA++-v2/model3.cc Tue Sep 30 21:24:18 2003
+++ GIZA++-v2-osx/model3.cc     Sat Dec 23 18:16:08 2006
@@ -318,8 +318,8 @@
     d4file = Prefix + ".d4." + number ;
     d4file2 = Prefix + ".D4." + number ;
     d5file = Prefix + ".d5." + number ;
-      alignfile = Prefix + ".A3." + number ;
-      test_alignfile = Prefix + ".tst.A3." + number ;
+      alignfile = Prefix + ".uA3." + number ;
+      test_alignfile = Prefix + ".tst.uA3." + number ;
     p0file = Prefix + ".p0_3." + number ;
   }
   // clear count tables

I noticed this after running GIZA++ on NetBSD and the result was just like in README. Update: Now I switched from Mac OS X to Ubuntu http://blog.vee-u.com/2008/03/02/giza_pp/