Renaissance translator. Huzzah!

An important and common use for computer science ideas is for translating or converting text from one form, or one language, to another. Tools like Google Translate will convert text from one language to another. For this assignment, you’ll create a computer translator that will take text and convert it to Renaissance speech, a form of speech used at Renaissance fairs (or perhaps I should say Renaissance Faires) that may or may not be based in historical reality.

Create a folder in which to store your work for this assignment.

• If you are working on your own computer, it’s up to you where to put the folder. Your desktop is likely as good a place as any. Make a folder titled renaissance.
• If you are working in the labs in Olin, make sure to first mount the COURSES folder, so that you won’t lose your code when you log out. Once you’ve done so, open up Finder, then navigate to your personal student work folder. You can then make a renaissance folder within there.
• Once you’ve done so, you should then open up your new folder in VS Code. To do so, start up VS Code, then drag your folder onto the VS Code window. This should open up the folder within VS Code. If you are asked, click that you trust the authors.

Your mission is to create a program to convert English to Renaissance. Specifically, here are some rules to follow.

Separating the words from the punctuation is kind of tricky in Python. Python makes it easy when things you want to read are separated by spaces, not punctuation. Therefore, your input should have spaces between anything you want Python to read in separately, such as:

Hello ! Please , could you maybe tell me where the restroom is ?

Your program should allow you to type in your input, and print out to the terminal window the translated version of your text. Just to get you started, the below sample code reads a phrase that you enter and then prints out space-delimited words one-by-one, so that in principle you could do something with each word if you wished. Feel free to take a look and use this if it is helpful, but you may want to type in yourself any code that you use (copying and pasting with the mouse tends to make you skip actually learning it, whereas retyping it seems to get it to sink in better.)

phrase = input()

for word in phrase.split():
    print(word, end = ' ')

print()

While testing your code, you will likely find that it gets cumbersome to keep retyping your input over and over. It will be much faster if you put your input in a file, and redirect the input to your program to come from that file. In other words, create a file called source.txt (for example) that contains your input text, such as the example in the previous section. Then when you run your program, redirect your input to come from that file.

Redirecting your input from a file differs depending on whether you’re using a Mac or Windows. On a Mac, run your program like this:

$ python renaissance.py < source.txt

Think of the < as an arrow, directing the text inside source.txt to be the input to your program.

Alternatively, on Windows, if you are running in the Windows PowerShell prompt (this should be the default in VSCode), the following should work:

cat source.txt | python3 renaissance.py

(You might need to say `python` instead of `python3`, depending on how it installed.)

(As it turns out, this Windows PowerShell approach also works on Macs.)

If you get this far, you should feel proud of your achievements! If you want to push yourself harder and go for the exemplary grade, do the following extra challenge.

• Get your program to be able to successfully change the English phrase “thank you” to the Renaissance phrase “grammercy”. It should handle capitalization reasonably as for the rest of the assignment. However, if the word “thank” appears on its own without the word “you” immediately following it, the word “thank” should remain unchanged. We will not test the particularly complicated case of “thank thank you”, so your program can handle that situation however you like.)

This section is completely optional. If you want to, feel free to try to get your program working without needing to put spaces between words and punctuation. The below sample program is much like the input sample provided above, but separates words whenever the text transitions from a “word character” (i.e., a letter) to a “non-word character”, or vice-versa. You’re not responsible for knowing how the weird delimiter stuff works in this program, though I’m happy to explain it if anyone asks.

from re import *
from sys import *

phrase = input()

regex = compile('\w+|\W+')
for word in regex.findall(phrase):
    print(word, end="")

print()

Here are input files you can try to see how your code is doing, along with correct output. Note that some of those files are for the exemplary portion only.

You should make sure that your program follows good style. You should it as readable as possible for someone else trying to understand them. At a minimum, you should put a brief comment at the top explaining what the program does, and all of your variable names should be meaningful.

You will receive an M for this assignment if…

• your program displays the right output for each “M” input file. This means that the output matches the output I have provided, except for the fact that you will additionally have “Huzzah!” randomly appearing between sentences. When running the program multiple times, “Huzzah!” behavior changes.
• your program is written to work in general, and not to only work for the specific tests that we have provided.

• the 26 letters of the alphabet don’t explicitly appear in your code in some fashion. As an example, you don’t have code that looks something like

    if letter=='a' or letter=='b' or ...
  

• each word that needs translating is only compared once in your code. As an example, you don’t have code that looks something like

    if x == "hello" or x == "Hello" ...
  

You will receive a grade of E for this assignment if you satisfy the above M requirements, and …

• you satisfy the requirements for M
• your program has a Python comment at the top with at least 5 words describing what the program does.
• every one of your variable names is meaningful in some way. (Names such as thing, number, etc. are not meaningful.)
• your code displays the right output for each “E” input file.

When finished, zip up your code and submit your work through Moodle.

Good luck, and have fun! Remember that lab assistants are available to help out if you need it, and you can attend prefect sessions as well.