Spaddock wrote:
We have not encountered that problem ourselves (because we always start with a proper draft written by a qualified science writer), but if this is a frequent problem, we can easily add this functionality to MAX and let the regex run all across the text and provide best matches together with a likelihood score.
Your tool is designed for documents that have already been "fixed" by an editor (or that were written by authors who did not neglect to write full forms and acronyms together). The original poster wanted a tool that the editor would use to fix a text written by someone who did neglect it, or that a translator would use to translate such a text.
How sure could we be that the acronym is indeed found spelled out somewhere in the text?
You can't be sure of that. That is what software is for. The software helps prevent the translator/editor from having to manually search the text to see if the author had perhaps spelled out the acronym elsewhere in the text.
Is it possible that the author never mentions it?
Yes, precisely, that is very real risk. The software would help the translator by letting him know very quickly if the full form likely does not occur elsewhere in the text, thus saving the translator from needlessly going looking for it.
Would it, therefore, make sense to add an internet search (based on the content of the text) to see what else it could mean?
That is the usual last resort, yes. But an internet search can only show you what other authors used the acronym for, and then you have to make an educated guess as to whether your author and that author had used the acronym for the same thing.
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