Kyoto University
Premodern Chinese texts pose problems that
are difficult to accommodate with the current
TEI text model, which bases the main hierarchy
of a text on its structural content, rather than
on a hierarchy that models the pages, lines
and character positions. For the TEI, this is a
sensible decision and has led to the abolishment
of elements like <page> and <line> in the
latest release of the Guidelines. For premodern
Chinese texts however, especially texts that
are transmitted as manuscripts or woodblock
printings and have not yet seen a modern
edition printed with movable type (let alone
as, more recently, computerized typesetting),
establishing the structural hierarchy of the text
content is, together with the even more daunting
question of establishing the proper characters
of the text (on which see below), an important
part of the research question that motivates the
digitization of the text. Requiring an answer
to this question before a proper electronic text
can be created makes this intractable in the
digital medium and glosses over an important
leap of faith in the creation of a TEI encoded
text. In this paper, I will try to trace some
of the implications and propose an approach
that allows different models of the text for
different stages in the encoding process, thus
closer modeling the process of the creation of an
electronic text.
To arrive at a text properly encoded according
to the TEI Guidelines is not a straightforward
process, but in the setup described here requires
a detour through at least three stages:
-
Draft input of the text without any further
markings;
-
An incubator phase, in which the text is dealt
with as a series of pages (or scrolls), lines and
characters;
-
The mature text, based on the structural
model of a TEI <text>, which is available for
further refinement;
Of these steps, the second one is at the center
of attention in this paper, which will include the
discussion of the following three aspects:
1.
A text model according to these requirements;
2.
Mandoku, an application that allows
manipulating the text;
3.
A transform that specifies how a text
conforming to this specification can be turned
into a TEI encoded text.
1. Different Models for the Same
Text
The structural, content based hierarchy of the
text has to be established as part of the research
process. For this reason, the text at this stage
uses the only hierarchy available, that is the
one that is based on how the text is physically
recorded on the writing surface in the edition
used. During the process of working with the
text, milestone-like elements are inserted at
the starting points of elements of interest,
using the incubator as described in the next
section. Headings are numbered according to
their nesting depth as in a HTML document;
this forms the base for their transformation into
regular TEI nested <div>s followed by <head>
elements.
2. The Incubator: Mandoku
The tool used to manipulate a premodern
Chinese text in the incubator phase has been
called Mandoku. It makes it possible to display
a digital facsimile of one or more editions and
a transcribed text of these editions side by side
on the same screen. From there, the texts can be
proofread, compared and annotated. A special
feature is the possibility to associate characters
of the transcription with images cut from the
text and a database of character properties
and variants, which can be maintained while
operating on the text. Interactive commands
exist also to assist in identifying and record
structural and semantic features of the texts.
2
One of the major obstacles to digitization of
premodern Chinese texts is the use of character
forms that are much more ideosyncratic than
today's standard forms. Since in most cases
they cannot be represented, they are exchanged
during input for the standard forms. This is a
potentially hazardous and error-prone process
at best, and completely distorts the text in
worse cases. To improve on this situation and
to make the substitution process itself available
to analysis, Mandoku uses the position of a
character in a text as the main means of
addressing, allowing the character encoding to
become part of the modelling process, thus
making it available to study and analysis, which
in turn should make the process of encoding
more tractable even for premodern texts. The
current model is still experimental, but initial
results have been encouraging.
Mandoku is work in progress and is developed as
part of the Daozang jiyao project at the Institute
for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University by
Christian Wittern. In this paper, an emphasis
will be placed on the different models of a
text that are underlying the different stages of
preparation of a text and the friction, but also
benefits, that arise out of such a situation. The
following is a screenshot of the main interface,
displaying a facsimile and a transcribed version
of the same text side by side.
Fig. 1.
Mandoku in action
3. Transform to TEI <text>
Finally, as a proof of concept, a XSLT script has
been developed that performs an algorithmic
transformation from the text in the intermediate
format to a text as it has to appear as content of
the TEI <text> element.
This produces a new version of the text with an
inverted hierarchy: The primary hierarchy now
is the content hierarchy, whereas the hierarchy
of the text bearing medium is demoted to a
secondary one, represented by milestones. None
of these hierarchies is a priori superior to
the other, but in the context of the Daozang
jiyao project the purpose of preparing the texts
is to make it available for a study of the
collection, so the emphasis during the later
stages in the life of the text will lie on the
content hierarchy. The problem of overlapping
hierarchies, which is such a scratching itch for
many text projects, poses itself thus in a slightly
different incarnation: The different hierarchies
occur in two different stages of preparation of
the text, which require different viewpoints, but
not simultaneous presentation, which makes it
easier to accommodate the two in our workflow.
The preparation of a TEI encoded
representation of the texts is however not the
ultimate goal of the project. The next phase
requires analytical interaction with the text for
which again the TEI representation might not
be the ideal format to work with, so there
might be a number of different, purpose-specific
derivative formats generated from the TEI texts.
They will maintain the required information to
refer additional information back to the master
files kept in TEI, and to be able to participate
in the ongoing evolving of the master text, to
which transcriptions of more witnesses will be
added, but will otherwise also contain additional
commentary, translation and other information
that will not belong to the original file. The
details of this part of the system are under
consideration now and will be the topic for
another presentation.
4. Conclusions
The current TEI text model does not allow
the direct description of the document as it
appears on a text bearing surface without
also establishing a content hierarchy. For this
reason, a temporary encoding strategy had to
be developed, which is TEI conformant to the
letter, but not to the spirit of the TEI Guidelines
by wrapping all of the text content in one giant
<p> (or possibly <ab>) element. Only after the
structural hierarchy has been established is it
possible to make a transformation to a truly
conformant and satisfying TEI document. The
slight feeling of uneasiness that this workaround
causes might go away once the new <document>
element proposed by the TEI working group
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July 7, 2010 - July 10, 2010
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Conference website: http://dh2010.cch.kcl.ac.uk/
Series: ADHO (5)
Organizers: ADHO