Tibetan Renaissance Seminar > Assignments > BA English Markup

Thematic Markup Of Blue Annals Chapter In English from the Tibetan Renaissance Seminar

This assignment involves using Microsoft Word to markup an English translation of a Blue Annals chapter.

1. You should review the chapter for basic errors - garbage, typos, structural divisions that are erroneous, wrong structural styles, etc.

2. You should review thematic markup in the chapter to make sure that the right markup is applied to terms, and terms are properly identified - place names as place names, etc. Speech and other citations should contain other kinds of markup. For example, if someone in the text says, "I went to Tibet and studied with Dorjé Drakpo there," the whole quote would be marked up first with the "Speech" style, and then Tibet would be marked as "Name Place" and Dorjé Drakpo would be marked as "Name Personal Human".

3. Convert proper names (i.e. personal names, place names, etc.) from Tibetan to phonetic rendering with the Tibetan Wylie name and birth-death dates given parenthetically. For the first instance of a term in a chapter, include the original Tibetan in parentheses. For all subsequent instances render the phonetic version and delete the original Tibetan.

4. Review the technical terminology (personal titles, technical vocabulary, etc.) in the chapter, and propose new English translations of the terms for our retranslation. Once Germano reviews and decides, go back and globally search and replace for your chapter.

In writing these assignments, follow the following general guidelines:

• General Guidelines for all Textual Data
• Introduction: Using Microsoft Word Styles
• Using Word Styles for THDL Markup
• Word Styles Thematic Markup for Blue Annals

Issues to be resolved

• Should footnotes be marked up beyond "Footnote Text"? What about headers?
• Should both the phonetic rendering and original Tibetan be marked up with proper name themes, or should the phonetic rendering only be marked as "Name Personal Human", for example, with the original Tibetan being marked as "Lang Tibetan"?
• When original Tibetan is relegated to parentheses after the phonetic rendering but before an existing parenthetical statement, should the parentheses be combined or left as is? In some cases, for example when the second parentheses is a Sanskrit translation of the name, it is clear that they can be combined. But when the second parentheses contains a comment or another Tibetan name, it might be better to footnote and remove it because a combination would be confusing.
• When are hyphens appropriate? Not for any Tibetan, but what about for Sanskrit and for hybrid Tibetan-Sanskrit?

Examples: Blue Annals Chapters in English