Towards a Common Aim and Framework for Tools and Research in Support of Bible Translation and Biblical Language Online Learning

What it is about

A position paper from SIL on how scholarly tool-building for the biblical languages could serve Bible translation. The author observes that the digital humanities community produces many tools and datasets but has no shared aim, and contrasts the needs of translators (simple, synthesised recommendations, high demand) with those of consultants and scholars (specialised analysis, debate, low demand). SIL's three series, Translator's Notes, Exegetical Summaries and Semantic and Structure Analyses, span that range. His concrete proposal: define a list of language features that do not transfer between languages (verbal nouns, genitive phrases, passives, implicit information, event order, metaphor, euphemism, litotes, irony, rhetorical questions, key terms…), and build exhaustive verse lists for each, in a shared exportable format, as the raw material for synthesis.

Ideas

• I1. Exhaustive per-feature verse lists are exactly what a rule-based parser can produce: for each feature prag or the trees can detect (rhetorical questions, passives, construct "of" chains, verbal nouns/infinitives, litotes such as לֹא + negative evaluation), emit a list of Torah verse ids with the rule that fired, as a TSV, and publish it with the manual.
• I2. Use the paper's feature list (after Barnwell 1986) as a checklist of what Discourse: narrative, speech and the shape of a text and 08-syntax.md should cover with a "how Mova detects it" line; mark the ones Mova cannot yet detect as gaps in chapter 13.

For Mova

I1 is an output mode for macula prag (a per-feature list with verse ids, cheap since the rules exist), and fits the parse database. I2 is an editorial check on Syntax: the clause and the sentence, 09-discourse.md and the gaps section of 13-mova-tools.md. The paper itself has no linguistic analysis.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.7146/hn.v5i2.142735

@inproceedings{orear2019common,
  title = {{Towards a Common Aim and Framework for Tools and Research in Support of Bible Translation and Biblical Language Online Learning}},
  author = {O'Rear, Paul A.},
  booktitle = {HIPHIL Novum 5},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.7146/hn.v5i2.142735},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v5i2.142735}
}

References

3 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Barnwell, Katharine. Bible Translation: An Introductory Course for Mother-Tongue Translators. Dallas: SIL International, 1986. find
2. Barnwell, Katharine, Paul Dancy, and Anthony G. Pope. Key Biblical Terms in the New Testament: An Aid for Bible Translators. Dallas: SIL International, 2009. find
3. SIL International. Rhetorical Questions in the New Testament: A Checklist for Translators. Dallas: SIL International, 1999. find

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