Text Speak ⇒ English

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; I have too many other projects of my own.

I do contract work for a living, which could include writing a program such as this. However, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavor.

This is a very simple project. Have you ever received an email from someone with a cell-phone who texted you a message with his thumbs? “plz tell me wot u wanna l8r dew 2nite.”. To the uninitiated, it is unintelligible gibberish. Your job is to write a program to convert it into standard English.

The simplest version of this program is just a list of phrases that you replace by their English equivalent e.g. u becomes you. In more sophisticated versions, you tidy up the capitalisation and spelling generally. In truly sophisticated versions you treat this as you would translating French into English, with analysis of grammar.

What do you do with result?

Embed it as a Thunderbird email program ad-on so that you can have your incoming emails translated at the click of an icon.
You set up an email forwarding service on the web that optionally translates both ingoing and outgoing messages to or from text speak so that people with computers and cell-phones can communicate with each other in their preferred idiom. You make your money by appending single line ads.

text speak
Thunderbird

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