The TEI Internationalization Proposal: issues and criteria of cultural localisation of the TEI...

The TEI Internationalization Proposal: issues and criteria of cultural

localisation of the TEI Guidelines

Valentina Notarberardino“La Sapienza” University of Rome

CLiP 2006, LONDON

THE PROJECT: TEI Internationalization proposal

WHY “INTERNATIONALIZATION”?: The TEI Guidelines are used for encoding texts in dozens of languages all over the world (in Europe, America and Asia) by projects and institutions.

– Non-English speakers are in a considerable disadvantage in learning and using the Guidelines.

Its MAIN GOAL is making the TEI Guidelines more accessible to the international community by:

1. creating an infrastructure for translation and a synchronized version of the translated Guidelines;

2. translating parts of the Guidelines in a minimum of five languages (French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese);

3. making the necessary modifies to the Roma schema-generation tool.

DEFINITIONS

Internationalization : “is the process of generalizing a product so that it can handle multiple languages and cultural conventions without the need for redesign. Internationalization takes place at the level of program design and document development”.

[w3 definition]

[ T ] Translation: The act or process of rendering in another language. [dictionary.com]

[ L ] Localization: “is the process of taking a product and making it linguistically and culturally appropriate to a given target locale (country/region and language) where it will be used”. [w3 definition]

AREAS OF “INTERNATIONALIZATION”

The TEI Guidelines are written in a modular structure. They contains four main areas of interest and this allows a “formal” approach to the “internationalization” of each section:

1) The descriptive prose of the chapters (each chapter deals with one main topic); [ T ]

2) The element, attribute names and attribute suggested values; [ T ]

3) The technical description of elements and attributes; [ T ]

4) The examples of usage for each element. [ L ]

EXISITING WORK

• ( 1 ) Six translations of the short TEI Lite documentations (but they don’t include the translation of element names and of the technical description of elements);

• ( 1 ) translation of TEI Header chapter into French;

• ( 2 ) translation of all element names to German and Spanish (for example: <addrLine> becomes <líneaDirección> and <AdressZeile>);

• ( 3 ) translation of element and attribute descriptions into French, Chinese and Japanese:

“L'élément Taxinomie <taxonomy> définit une typologie employée pour classer des textes soit implicitement au moyen d’une citation bibliographique, soit explicitement au moyen d’une taxinomie structurée”. [...]

EXISTING WORK: (1) the French TEI Header chapter

(3) EXAMPLE TEXTS• “Theoretical examples” showing just the tags’ syntax.

<body> <div type="part" n="1"> <div type="chapter" n="1">  </div>

</body>

• “Applicative examples” where the tags mark-up texts taken from the English literature – prose, poetry and drama - from newspapers’ articles, and so on.

We will focus on the issues and the criteria involved in translating these “applicative examples” towards Italian.

“INTERNATIONALIZATION” OF THE EXAMPLES

Options:

• Keeping the English originals (this won’t make the entire Guidelines more accessible to non English speakers);

• Translating them (this wouldn’t illustrate very effectively the elements’ usage for a non English speaker);

• Looking for corresponding Italian texts:

Internationalization

Translation Cultural localisation

LOCALISATION OF THE EXAMPLES: criteria

• Tag(s) (elements + attributes): their usage and the suggested values for attributes are presented in the descriptive prose that precedes the example. The “localized” text must show them.

• Textual structure: organization in chapters, paragraphs, stanzas.• Genre: if the text is taken from a novel, a poem, a drama, a

newspaper article and so on.• Content: what is the text about?• Length: how many instances of the same tag are presented?• Date: sometimes it is fundamental knowing when the text was

written.

Genre

Structure Length

Date

Content

Tags

LOCALISATION: How to proceed?

1. Reading the descriptive prose and find out what tag(s) the example is going to show;

2. Analysing the English example;3. Looking for an Italian corresponding text by starting

from…

the centrality of the tags… towards…

…the other criteria:

We will have to follow a different one for each example;

Sometimes those criteria overlap in importance so that it is not possible to establish an “always true” standard hierarchy of importance for them. They have to be adapted to many different cases.

1) THE DESCRIPTIVE PROSE: chap. 7. 1. 3.

7.1 Divisions of the Body[prose]

7.1.3 Numbered or Un-numbered?[…]

The following extended example uses numbered divisions to indicate the structure of a novel, and illustrates the use of the attributes discussed above. It also uses some elements discussed in section 7.2 Elements Common to All Divisions and the <p> element discussed in section 6.1 Paragraphs:

TEXT FROM THE EXAMPLE

http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/DS.html#DSDTB

http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/CO.html#COPA

<div0 type="book" n="I" id="JA0100"><head> Book I. </head><div1 type="chapter" n="1" id="JA0101"><head> Of writing lives in general, and particularly of Pamela […] <head><p> It is a trite but true observation, […] </p></div1><trailer> The end of the first Book </trailer>

</div0> <div0 type="book" n="II" id="JA0200"><head> Book II </head> <div1 type="chapter" n="1" id="JA0201"><head> Of divisions in authors </head><p> [...] </p></div1>

</div0>

2) ANALYSIS OF THE ENGLISH TEXT:

Remarkable features:

• It is a passage taken from an English novel [genre] made up of two books and of some chapters [structure];

• As indicated in the prose preceding the example, it shows numbered divisions for texts (<div0>, <div1>, etc.) and their responding attributes (n, id, type) [tags];

• There are some “additional tags” that are extraneous to the aim of the example: some <p> and <head> tags and the <trailer> of the first book.

3) LOOKING FOR AN ITALIAN TEXT

It should be:

• … taken from an Italian novel (genre)…• … made up of two books containing chapters (structure).

Content is unimportant as irrelevant for the elements (i.e. the tags) showed.

It’s neither necessary looking for a text belonging to the same age (date) because that textual structure is common to different ages.

We can decide not to maintain the <trailer>, because the descriptive prose doesn’t contain any reference to it. We must keep the <p> and <head> tags as the prose links to the Guidelines’ paragraphs dealing with these elements.

We should show the same number of paragraphs (length) in order to facilitate the synchronized visualization of the different linguistic versions.

“FORSE CHE SÌ FORSE CHE NO” (1910), a novel by G. D’Annunzio

<div0 type="book" n="I" id=“…”><head> Libro Primo </head><div1 type="chapter" n="1" id=“…”><p> - Forse – rispondeva la donna, quasi protendendo il sorriso contro il

vento eroico della rapidità, […] </p></div1></div0> <div0 type="book" n="II" id=“…”><head> Libro Secondo </head> <div1 type="chapter" n="1" id=“…”><p> O lunella, mia lunella […] </p></div1></div0>

MORE EXAMPLES: chap. 7.1.4. <div1 type="storylist" org="composite" ><head> News in brief </head><div2 type="story"><head> Police deny <soCalled> losing </soCalled> bomb </head><p> Scotland Yard yesterday denied claims in the SundayExpress that anti-terrorist officers trailing an IRA vanloaded with explosives in north London had lost track ofit 10 days ago. </p></div2><div2 type="story"><head> Hotel blaze </head><p> Nearly 200 guests were evacuated before dawnyesterday after fire broke out at the ScandicCrown hotel in the Royal Mile, Edinburgh. </p></div2></div1>

“LOCALISING”

English text:• It is an extract from a

newspaper’s article (genre);

• The descriptive prose says the example is going to show the org=“composite” attribute put inside the <div> tags;

• Additional tags: <p>, <head> and <soCalled> (the prose doesn’t link to them).

Italian text: Taken from a

newspaper’s “composite” storylist (genre + structure) containing at least two or three short articles (length);

Storylists are generally organized in some short articles (one <p>) introduced by one <head>) so that those tags will be automatically maintained;

Content and chronology are unimportant.

MORE EXAMPLES: chap. 6. 3. 3.

When the examples show specific elements, such as the <soCalled> tag, the content criterion is prevalent:

a) He hated <soCalled> good </soCalled> books.

b) <soCalled> Croissants </soCalled> indeed! toast not good enough for you?

We could translate or reinvent these sentences by keeping their same communicative purpose and/or the linguistic context.

a) Amava quella <soCalled>brutta</soCalled> musica [reinvented]

b) I <soCalled>cornetti</soCalled> certamente! Non ti basta il toast? [translated]

CONCLUSIONS

1) Localisation of the examples is a fundamental step to making the TEI Guidelines more accessible to non English speakers;

2) It might be done by following six main analytic and selective criteria (tag, genre, structure, content, length, date);

3) It has to be undertaken in a multidisciplinary and multi-linguistic perspective as it requires a person:

who is a native speaker of the target language and who knows English;

who has got a genuine experience in text encoding; who has got a good literary background.

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