1. The Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Linguistic Research and Database Design in
Polyalphabetic Environments
Torsten Roeder (BBAW),
Yury Arzhanov (Ruhr Universität Bochum)

2. Ms. Paris BnF 5847, f. 5:
Muslim scholars in discussion.

3. Arabic
translation of
Dioscurides’
Materia medica
(Ibn alalal-adwiya
wa-l-aghdhiya,
1–4.
1291 H.)

4. Filecards for
the Greek and
Arabic Lexicon
(GALex)

5. GALex

6. The Database Glossarium Græco-Arabicum

7. The Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
makes available information in the following
fields of research:
• the vocabulary and syntax of Classical and
Middle Arabic;
• the development of a scientific and technical
vocabulary in Arabic;
• the vocabulary of Classical and Middle
Greek;
• the chronology and nature of the translation
movement into Arabic;
• the establishment of the texts of Greek
works and their Arabic translations.

8. The Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum online:

9. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
BERLIN-BRANDENBURGISCHE
AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN

10. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
I
Technical Challenges
→ polyalphabetic environment
II
Scholarly Requirements
→ linguistic database
III Technical vs. Scholarly
→ concluding discussion
OUTLINE

11. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
1
Languages Used in the GlossGA Interface
2
Unicode Character Corpus
3
Areas of Technical Challenges
4
Examples
I. TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

12. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Languages used within the project:
Ancient Greek
Medieval Arabic
Modern English
Greek alphabet
Arabic alphabet
Latin alphabet
3 layers of diacritics
optional vowel signs
1 layer of diacritics
LTR (left to right)
RTL
LTR
I.1. LANGUAGES

13. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Unicode Chart
Range
Description
C0 Controls and Basic Latin
Latin Extended-A
Latin Extended-Additional
0000-007F
0100-017F
1E00-1EFF
Latin Alphabet
transliteration symbols
transliteration symbols
Greek and Coptic
Greek Extended
0370-03FF
1F00-1FFF
Greek Alphabet
Greek Diacritics
Arabic
Arabic Supplement
Spacing Modifier Letters
0600-06FF
0750-077F
02B0-02FF
Arabic Alphabet
Arabic Alphabet
special Arabic characters
→ in total: about 450 different characters from eight different charts
I.2. UNICODE

14. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Requirements:
1. Data input in all three alphabets with all vowels and diacritics
→ How to implement a comfortable interface?
2. Simultaneous display of texts in three alphabets and two directions
→ How to implement concurrent writing directions?
3. Search for terms, insensitive for diacritics or vowels
→ How to implement queries with different collation sets?
I.3. REQUIREMENTS

15. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
a
b
Writing Directions
c
Search
d
I.4. EXAMPLES
Data Input
Search Terms

16. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
ʾ˒ʿ˓
I.4.a. DATA INPUT

17. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
[ʾ]
U+02BE
MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING
transliteration of Arabic hamza
[˒]
U+02D2
MODIFIER LETTER CENTRED RIGHT HALF RING
more rounded articulation
[ʿ]
U+02BF
MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
transliteration of Arabic ain
[˓]
U+02D3
MODIFIER LETTER CENTRED LEFT HALF RING
less rounded articulation
I.4.a. DATA INPUT

18. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Problem: Appearance vs. Encoding
Users will normally choose charaters …
→ not because of their unicode description
→ but because of their appearance
How to bring Unicode to the user?
I.4.a. DATA INPUT

19. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Solutions:
–
restrict the characters accepted by the database
→ safe, but required validation methods
–
provide a virtual keyboard (onscreen)
→ user-friendly
Alternative methods:
–
beta code
→ less recommendable from unicode point of view
→ but widely used
I.4.a. DATA INPUT

20. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Phenomenon:
Home (THEN) Arabic Glossary (THEN) ‫( ص‬THEN) ‫صحة‬
becomes
Home > Arabic Glossary > ‫ص< صحة‬
I.4.b. WRITING DIRECTIONS

21. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Problem: Strong vs. Weak Characters
In Unicode, alphabetic characters are usually
STRONG CHARACTERS
which determine the writing direction,
while punctuation characters are usually
WEAK CHARACTERS
which do not change the writing direction.
→ relevant in:
comma separated lists, bibliographic references,
breadcrumb lines, table alignments …
I.4.b. WRITING DIRECTIONS

22. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Solutions:
–
insert a ”strong whitespace”:
Unicodes U+200E (left to right) or U+200F (right to left)
–
or, if in HTML, set the writing direction directly:
<span dir="ltr">…</span>
I.4.b. WRITING DIRECTIONS

23. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
GREEK
ARABIC
ENGLISH
diacritics
not distinct
vowel signs
not distinct
diacritics
distinct
requirement:
η finds also ἠ ἦ ἥ
requirement:
‫ سبب‬finds also ‫سبب‬
7 88
requirement:
d does not find ḏ
Problem: Distinction vs. Collation
I.4.c. SEARCH

24. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Solution:
Greek
Greek collation
Arabic
Arabic collation
English
Latin collation
Collation Charts: <http://unicode.org/charts/uca/>
Restrictions:
–
–
does not work for mixed texts
→ data needs to be separated
some environments do not support Arabic vowel collation
→ e.g. MySQL <6.0
I.4.c. SEARCH

25. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Phenomenon:
–
–
user searches for Arabic words starting with ‫مل‬
truncation sysmbol (asterisk) appears at the wrong side
‫*مل‬
Problem: Neutral Writing Direction
–
–
the standard asterisk is a NEUTRAL CHARACTER
it adapts the main writing direction
I.4.d. SEARCH TERMS

26. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Solution:
Unicode Arabic Asterisk (U+066D), right-to-left
‫مل٭‬
I.4.d. SEARCH TERMS

27. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Challenges for the Developer:
–
Unicode does not provide general truncation or joker symbols
–
different asterisk and joker signs must be processed
–
no standard solution available
I.4.d. SEARCH TERMS

28. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Technical Recommendations for Polyalphabetic Environments
–
use software components that supports unicode thoughout
–
compose a project corpus of unicode characters
–
provide input methods to make the characters easily available
–
consider unicode writing directions and collations
–
make sure that all characters do not only appear correctly,
but that they are also encoded correctly
SUMMARY OF I.

29. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
1
Corpus
→ How to deal with a database of 70,000+ words?
2
Translation movements
→ How to visualize transformations of language structures?
3
Single Lexemes
→ How to transform the database into a dictionary?
II. SCHOLARLY REQUIREMENTS

30. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
How to deal with a database of 70,000+ words?
–
search form
→ user needs to know exactly what he/she is looking for
–
browsing
(e.g. by sources and words in alphabetical order)
→ user needs to know roughly what he/she is looking for
–
visualization
→ statistical and/or graphical approach
→ user can explore the corpus
II.1. CORPUS

31. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Distributon of sources
in the GlossGA corpus
Area size corresponds
to number of words
→ Which sources constitute
the major/minor parts
of the corpus?
II.1.a. CORPUS TREEMAP

32. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Distribution of words
in one source
Area size corresponds
to number of words
→ What kind of
vocabulary does
constitute
the source?
II.1.b. SOURCE TREEMAP

33. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
How to visualize transformation of language structures?
→ compare parts of speech in diagrams (experimental)
II.2. TRANSLATION MOVEMENTS

34. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Compared Parts of Speech
Blue:
Greek Parts of Speech
Red:
Arabic Parts of Speech
Bar Length:
number of words
of respective part of speech
II.2.a. TRANSLATION MOVEMENTS

35. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Compared Parts of Speech
X-Axis:
Greek Parts of Speech
Y-Axis:
Arabic Parts of Speech
Intersections:
Dot size represents number
of words transferred from
Greek PoS into Arabic PoS
II.2.b. TRANSLATION MOVEMENTS

36. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
How to transform the database into a dictionary?
Experimental preview:
→ collation of all entries of a Greek lexeme
→ ordered by Arabic lexeme
→ output with source and context
II.3.a. SINGLE LEXEMES

37. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Export function via email:
II.3.b. SINGLE LEXEMES

38. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Recommendations
1
provide multiple access methods
→ support various user scenarios
2
invent statistical and visual evaluation methods
→ profit from electronic data processing
3
provide conventional scholarly formats
→ correspond to the community’s needs
SUMMARY OF II.

39. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Situation: Technical vs. Scholarly Requirements
–
which one goes first?
→ technical requirements as necessary basis
→ scholarly requirements as superior objective
–
–
both need attention from scholars
both need attention from techies
→ vice versa understanding
→ team competence
LAST BUT ONE SLIDE

40. November 2013
Telota
Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum
Thanks
to you for your attention!
Project Website
http://telota.bbaw.de/glossga
Contact
Yury Arzhanov | yury.arzhanov@rub.de
Torsten Roeder | roeder@bbaw.de