The Quran in Translation

A Survey of the State-of-the-Art

Freie Universität

5–7 December 2018

Rethinking TEI: Cross-project Alignment of Multiple Digital Versions of the Qur'an

Joel Kalvesmaki, Dumbarton Oaks

The process of textual scholarship

Inquiry

reading | studying | thinking

Creation

writing | speaking

A creation sits along a spectrum.

An inquiry gazes across that spectrum.

text-bearing objects (scripta)

↔

meaning (intertexts)

Clash of scriptum-oriented resources

Idiosyncratic structure, markup
Idiosyncratic normalization
Idiosyncratic syntax, underlying meaning
Idiosyncratic paratexts, annotations
Idiosyncratic formats

Reconciling scriptum-oriented resources

Conversion is time-consuming
Subject to interpretation
One-way process
Everyone must repeat the process

TEI challenges

Enormous (> 500 elements; > 200 attributes)
Subject to interpretation
Subject to choice

Syntax

 <div type="sura" n="2 al_baqara">
                                <ab type="incipit bismillah"
                                n="bismillah">بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ
                                ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ</ab> </div>

Syntax

<div type="sura" n="114"> <ab type="aya" n="4, 5">ἐκ κακοῦ ψιθυρισµάτων τῶν δαιµόνων εἰς τὰς
                                καρδίας τῶν ἀνθρώπων,</ab> </div>

Semantics

Terminology undefined ("aya" = ?)
Metadata readable primarily by humans, not computers
Header idiosyncratic

Customizing and Supplementing TEI

TEI is less a standard than a set of common practices
Intended to be customized
Other layers of rules can be applied

Rethinking TEI

TAN XML

Text Alignment Network

textalign.net

TAN

maximizes syntactic interoperability
RDF-like semantics
much more

1 = 1

1 = (1, 2)

“Jerusalem”

(“Jerusalem”, “القُدس‎”, “http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jerusalem”)

(“القُدس‎”, “http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jerusalem”)

(“Jerusalem”, “http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jerusalem”)

Synonymity in TAN

 <body affects-element="div-type"> . . . . . . . . .
                            <item>
                                    <IRI>tag:textalign.net,2015:div-type:sūra</IRI>
                                <IRI>http://dbpedia.org/resource/Surah</IRI>
                                <name>sūra</name>
                                <name>sura</name>
                                <name>surah</name> </item>
                            . . . . . . . . . </body>

 <group affects-attribute="n" affects-element="work">
                                <item>
                                    <IRI>tag:textalign.net,2015:n-alias:quran:surah114</IRI>
                                <name xml:lang="ara">الناس</name>
                                <name xml:lang="ara-Latn">al nās</name>
                                <name xml:lang="ara-Latn">al nas</name>
                                <name xml:lang="ara-Latn">an nas</name>
                                <name xml:lang="eng">mankind</name>
                                </item> </group>

<div type="sura" n="114 al_nās">
                            <div type="aya" n="4-5">ἐκ
                                κακοῦ ψιθυρισµάτων τῶν δαιµόνων εἰς τὰς καρδίας τῶν
                                ἀνθρώπων,</div> </div>