Word Styles Thematic Markup For Blue Annals

Tibetan Renaissance Seminar > Technical Documentation> Word Styles Thematic Markup For Blue Annals

Word Styles Thematic Markup For Blue Annals

Overview

Styles in Word are a way to standardize a certain formatting that you want to repeatedly apply. For example, instead of manually formatting a citation by indenting it, putting it into italics, and make it a blue font, you could just create a "citation" style. Once the citation style is applied, the formatting associated with it is automatically applied. In the future, if you change the formatting associated with that style, all passages with that style applied automatically have the new formatting applied to it. Styles in Word are of two types: paragraph and character. The latter applies to small strings of text (bold and italic are classical examples), while the former apply to blocks of texts (paragraphs, lists, etc.).

We have defined a series of styles that are intended to structurally identify components of Tibetan texts using paragraph styles - paragraph, verse, citation, etc. - and thematically identify components of Tibetan texts using character styles - text titles, personal names, place names, etc. The long term goal of this is we will convert these styles into XML thematic tags, which will allow us over the web to do flexible display and searching based upon the tags (i.e. search only citations, etc.).

Structural markup

The structural markup involves applying the respective styles to the paragraphs, verse segments, prose citations, and verse citations. In the baseline file that we will be editing, some of the most common structural markup is:

  1. the entire body of the text is paragraph (pr) style if prose
  2. root text in verse is verse (v1 for the first line of a stanza, v2 for the other lines)
  3. citations are either citation prose (cp1, cp2) or citation verse (cv1, cv2); do not use quotation marks
  4. break excessively long paragraphs in to smaller paragraphs if you can see natural breaks.

If you discover sub-sections in the text, give it a short title and mark it with the appropriate heading style (one more than the section heading that contains it - i.e. if its a subsection of a h3 titled section, then heading 4 (h4).

Page numbers to Roerich’s translation should be put in brackets and prefaced with an R. Roerich’s translation is peppered throughout with his own editorial interpolations, including making explicit words that are only implied in the original Tibetan but are necessary for the translation to make sense, bibliographic information about texts cited in the Blue Annals, and explanations of key terms. Our edit aims to remove all of the extraneous material in the body of text. To this end, take the latter two types of text and put them in footnotes, where he has already relegated citations of the secondary literature. The short interpolations of words and phrases which are clearly essential to the translation of the Tibetan itself should be retained as they are. If he is just giving the Tibetan word for a given thing being translated, leave it as such. If he is giving the Sanskrit of a title, move it into the footnote. The page numbers Roerich gives to the Tibetan text he used in the translation should also be put in brackets. Convert Roerich translation page numbers into the format {R 44} at the beginning of each page. If you want to insert Tibetan edition references use the same format but use CH for Chengdu, and CA for Candra. When parentheses are integral to R's translation, leave them as they are. Eventually, though, we may remove the parentheses from around these words and phrases. One the other hand, the parenthetical material that is merely explanatory needs to be put in the footnotes. If you have found a clear way to divide the Blue Annals’s own structural divisions into smaller subdivisions, put headers for the next level in and title them.

Thematic markup

Thematic markup is best attempted after the initial spell-check and structural markup. It is different from structural markup in that it is involved with identifying certain types of words within the broader structural elements of the overall text. The styles to apply to their relevant instances are as follows.

Make sure to give each thing a separate character style and not run them together - thus if you have a Tibetan personal name followed by its Sanksrit equivalent in parentheses, you need to highlight the Tibetan and Sanskrit individually without including the parentheses (for example)

Name personal human: nph. As for titles in front of names (rinpoche, kalyanamitra/geshe, etc.), in general the titles should NOT be marked up as part of the personal name. When in doubt, include it. Ultimately we need a markup that allows for tagging "titles" but right now we don't have it. If you have a reference to a generic "the Dakini", or "Rinpoche gave it to her", etc., those also are NOT marked up for now. Same for “Master”, “Mahapandita”, etc. Personal name is just for actual personal names, not pronouns, titles, etc.

Name personal Buddhist deity: npb. yes if you have a reference to the historical buddha, aka shakyamuni, "muni", etc. - mark it up as "buddhist deity" to be consistent. They don't distinguish between shakyamuni as a historical individual and other buddhas as non-historical so neither should we. "the sixteen elders" is more difficult, i.e. the "sixteen arhats". They are historical followers of shakyamuni buddha believed to have attained a limited realization referred to as "arhat-ship", and in this case form a legendary group that in later narratives were believed to have remained accessible to promote the spread of buddhism and became in important group represented in art. However if we represent them as "buddhist deity", then we should also do the same for many historical figures like Nagarjuna and so forth believed to be bodhisattvas. Thus they should all be marked just as personal name. In the future with XML and a more fine tuned markup, "personal name" will have much more specificity - there will be attribute where you can say "gender=male/female", "ethnicity=tibetan/sanskrit/chinese/etc", "type=ordinary person, buddhist saint, buddha, bodhisattva, etc.", but for now we just have to keep it failry simple since we have so much overhead and if we keep changing things it will be unworkable. So: Shakyamuni=buddhist deity, All historical personages=personal name human.

Name personal other (i.e., deities): npo

Name place: np

Dates: dt. If he gives Tibetan and western dates fire-female-hen year (me mo bya—1432). Just leave it as Roerich has it and specify dt style for all of it.

Monuments: nm

Name organization: nor. This is the generic term for reference to groups or organizations. This includes references to lineages, sects and so forth.

Name org clan: noc. This is used for clans.

Name organization lineage: nol. This is the name used to refer to lineages.

Name organization monastery: norm. This is used for a monastery or other religious institution with physical setting (i.e. buildings).

Name of ethnicity: noe. This includes Chinese, Khampas, etc.

Religious practice: rp,for any types of religious practices.

Text title: tt; for a Sanskrit original text (regardless of whether a Tibetan translation is being referred to or a Tibetan title is used) (tts), for a Tibetan original text (ttt). If the text is claimed to be a Tibetan translation of a Sanskrit text, follow the claim rather than your own judgment.

Text group: tg, If you have things which seem to NOT be text titles, but rather generic references to groups of texts - like "he studied the cycle of rdzogs chen sems sde", or "she transmitted the six doctrines of naropa". This also applies for references to more formal compilations, such as the bka’ ‘gyur, rnying ma rgyud ‘bum and so forth.

Doxographical-bibliographical category: dbc, This is used when a category as such is cited, such as Atiyoga, Madhyamaka and so forth.

Conversation: mark all conversation or citations of speech as “speech”, which is usually prose (sp), but if spontaneous poetry could be verse (sv1, sv2). In addition, mark the speaker’s name (speaker generic, sg; speaker buddhist deity, sb, speaker human, sh, speaker other, so). Speaker generic is used when you don’t know how to classify the speaker, while speaker other is used when you know the speaker is not human or a Buddhist deity, i.e. a local spirit, etc.

Footnotes and Bibliographical citations

Roerich often inserts long notes into the text, especially for bibliographical citations. all of these should be moved into footnotes so that all that remains in the main text is a translation of the original Tibetan text, or necessary additions to render it into cogent English. Follow the material by “(R)” to indicate its source. If you add notes, parenthetically follow it with (Contributed by David Germano" (insert your own name) to indicate its source.

For bibliographical citations, within reason try to ascertain the proper citation. Our main learning goal within the class is to learn how to look up citations in Tibetan canonical literature so focus on those types of citations. Do not end up spending too much time seeking citations at the expense of other work.