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I've actually been working on this. Dutch, unfortunately, but here you go: http://lucb1e.com/rp/js/en%20dan%20nu%20in%20het%20Nederland...

Quick translation of the text on the page:

Title: And now in plain Dutch

Intro paragraph: Contracts are always written in a very cryptic manner. So what do they say in short, plain old Dutch?

Status of the project: beta. I've "translated" 2 out of 38 paragraphs from one contract I've received, and that was a lot of work already. Those paragraphs work fine now, but it still needs a lot more work.



Couple questions. Have you had any customers? What type of legal docs do you think are best to target?

Are you trying to generate summaries programmatically?


> "Have you had any customers?"

No, no, it's nothing like that. It's just a small Javascript thingy that tries to convert legal nonsense into sense. I got a contract in Dutch that I found took way longer to read than it should (like, really read and understand all implications), made this script and threw it online. It's in a directory with dozens of unfinished scripts that I wrote.

So yes, summaries are generated programmatically. They have no legal value but provide a much better read of what is written in the contract.


How does it translate any legal writing into a simpler form? That sounds like a damn nearly impossible language processing feat.


Simple text replacement. I'm sorry if I just shattered the mental picture of some high-tech language processing, but this pretty crude method that just gets the job done :P




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