The Encoding of Terminology Related to the Medieval Slavic Manuscripts: Philological and Technological Results and Perspectives

The author of the presentation makes an attempt to
summarize problems and prospects concerning
terminology used in computer supported description of Slavic
manuscripts in two Slavic languages – Bulgarian and Russian,
and, at the same time – in English and German. The report is
a result of a working team in the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences and Sofia University: Anisava Miltenova (Institute of
Literature, director of the project), Andrej Bojadžiev (University
of Sofia), Margaret Dimitrova (University of Sofia), Irina
Kuzidova (Institute of Literature), Regina Koycheva (Institute
of Literature), Maya Petrova (Institute of Literature), and Svetla
Koeva (Institute of Bulgarian Language). They are working in
the frames of the project Metadata and Electronic Catalogues
(2004–08), a component of the Repertorium of Old Bulgarian
Literature and Letters. The project is oriented to create
electronic catalogues and authority files that will serve as
integrated repositories of terminological information that has
been developed and applied successfully in already existing
projects in the realm of medieval Slavic languages, literatures,
and cultures. One innovative feature of this project is that
beyond serving as a central repository for such information, it
will expand the organizational framework to support a
multilingual superstructure along the lines of I18N initiatives
elsewhere in the world of electronic text technology in general
and humanities computing in particular.
The project presumes the possibility of linking the standardized
terminological apparatus for description, study, edition, and
translation of medieval texts, on the one hand, to authoritative
lists of key-words and terms used in bibliographic descriptions,
on the other. This will allow the integration of scholarly
meta-data and bibliographic references under a single unified
framework. Another aim of the project is to create a mechanism
for allowing the extraction of different types of indices based
upon the imported documents even when the languages of
encoding may vary. The primary manuscript description texts
are encoded in a TEI-based XML format in the context of the
broader Repertorium initiative, and their utility for the type of
multilingual authority files, bibliographic databases, and other
broad reference resources illustrates the multipurposing that is
characteristic of XML documents in the humanities, but on a
broader scale than is usual.
One of the project’s main aims is to propose an approach with
the help of which the main terms of the Medieval culture could
be further explained with the original texts, translations and
current research activities. In this respect we could distinguish
several areas of knowledge: name of the various texts and
principles of such a naming, the author of the text(s) and
problems related with the transliteration and transcriptions of
the names; terms related to the text history its structure and
function; the language(s) of the text; the relationship between
the text and the codex; the Medieval mankind represented in
the texts, etc. This project is based on distinguishing the
meanings of particular terms and notions that appear in the text
of medieval written documents both within the primary corpus
and in comparison to established scholarly terminology.
In the frame of the project several types of indices have been
created: names of the texts (in four languages), genre
terminology (in the field of hymnography, hagiography,
homiletic literature, different kinds of instructions, etc.), types
of manuscripts (concerning their function), palaeographic and
codicological terms, linguistic terminology These indices could
be divided into two types:
• Entries in the form of lists which contain information for
usage of particular notion in the original Medieval texts .
• Entries in the form of terminological XML tool, which
contain research metadata, in the form of thesaurus.
The main difference between the both is the absence (in the
former) and the presence (in the latter) of definitions, and a
strict hierarchy of concepts. The first type of the information
represents a simple multilingual list of terms. The function of
this list could be explained as “It could be the standard way to
say this or to write this”. The entries of the second type have
more sophisticated structure, very close resembling to the
encyclopaedic article. A compulsory element of this type of
entries is the reference to the authority source, from which the
material is extracted and which is very appreciated among
scholars. In the informational area the specifications to the
particular standards are used.
The project is very actual in the context of discussions in the
frames of ISO activities for definitions of markup of the
terminological information (cf. TMF: Terminological Markup
Framework). Our model is based on the approved standard ISO
12000. The report includes demonstration of the current
project’s results both in the philological and technical aspects.