Tradition and Technology: A Design-Based Prototype of an Online Ginan Semantization Tool

The heritage of ginans of the Nizari Ismaili community comprises over 1,000 individual hymn-like poems of varying lengths and languages. The ginans were originally composed to spread the teachings of the Satpanth Ismaili faith and served as scriptural texts that guided the normative understanding of the community in South Asia. The emotive melodies of the ginans continue to enchant the members of the community in the diaspora who do not necessarily understand the language of the ginans. The language of the ginans is mixed and borrows vocabulary from Indo-Aryan and Perso-Arabic dialects. With deliberate and purposeful use of information technology, the online tool blends the Western best practices of language learning with the traditional transmission methods and materials of the Ismaili community. This study is based on the premise that for the teachings of the ginans to survive in the Euro-American diaspora, the successive generations must learn and understand the vocabulary of the ginans. The process through which humans learn and master vocabulary is called semantization, which refers to the process of learning and understand various senses and uses of words in a language. To this end, a sample ginan corpus was chosen and semantically analyzed to develop an online ginan lexicon. This lexicon was then used to enrich ginan texts with online glosses to facilitate semantization of ginan vocabulary. The design based-research methodology for prototyping the tool comprised two design iterations of analysis, design, and review. In the first iteration, the initial design of the prototype was based on the multidisciplinary literature review and an in-depth semantic analysis of ginan materials. The initial design was then reviewed by community ginan experts and teachers to inform the next design iteration. In the second design iteration, the initial design was enhanced into a functional prototype by adding features based on the expert suggestions as well as the needs of community learners gathered by surveying a convenience sample of 515 community members across the globe. The analysis of the survey data revealed that over 90% of the survey participants preferred English materials for learning and understanding the language of the ginans. In addition, having online access to ginan materials was expressed as a dire need for the community to engage with the ginans. The development and dissemination of curriculum-based educational programs and supporting resources for the ginans emerged as the most urgent and unmet expectations of the community. The study also confirmed that the wide availability of an online ginan learning tool, such as the one designed in this study, is highly desirable by English-speaking community members who want to learn and understand the tradition and teachings of ginans. However, such a tool is only a part of the solution for fostering sustainable community engagement for the preservation of ginans. To ensure that the tradition is carried forward by the future generations with compassion and understanding, the community institutions must make ginans an educational priority and ensure educational resources for ginans are widely available to community members

The Syntax of Colophons

The present volume focuses on the colophons found in several pothi manuscripts from Central, South and South East Asia. Its contributions discuss the colophons’ defining features, thus exposing their ‘syntax’, focusing particularly on the tracing of recurring patterns. The information extrapolated from colophons is further analysed to obtain a better understanding of these distinct manuscript cultures

The Syntax of Colophons

The present volume focuses on the colophons found in several pothi manuscripts from Central, South and South East Asia. Its contributions discuss the colophons’ defining features, thus exposing their ‘syntax’, focusing particularly on the tracing of recurring patterns. The information extrapolated from colophons is further analysed to obtain a better understanding of these distinct manuscript cultures

The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices

Writing is not just a set of systems for transcribing language and communicating meaning, but an important element of human practice, deeply embedded in the cultures where it is present and fundamentally interconnected with all other aspects of human life. The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices explores these relationships in a number of different cultural contexts and from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeological, anthropological and linguistic. It offers new ways of approaching the study of writing and integrating it into wider debates and discussions about culture, history and archaeology

The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices

Writing is not just a set of systems for transcribing language and communicating meaning, but an important element of human practice, deeply embedded in the cultures where it is present and fundamentally interconnected with all other aspects of human life. The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices explores these relationships in a number of different cultural contexts and from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeological, anthropological and linguistic. It offers new ways of approaching the study of writing and integrating it into wider debates and discussions about culture, history and archaeology

Building and verifying parallel corpora between Arabic and English

Arabic and English are acknowledged as two major natural languages used by many countries and regions. Reviews of previous literature conclude that machine translation (MT) between these languages is disappointing and unsatisfactory due to its poor quality. This research aims to improve the translation quality of MT between Arabic and English by developing higher quality parallel corpora. The thesis developed a higher quality parallel test corpus, based on corpora from Al Hayat articles and the OPUS open-source online corpora database. A new Prediction by Partial Matching (PPM)-based metric for sentence alignment has been applied to verify quality in translation between the sentence pairs in the test corpus. This metric combines two techniques; the traditional approach is based on sentence length and the other is based on compression code length. A higher quality parallel corpus has been constructed from the existing resources. Obtaining sentences and words from two online sources, Al Hayat and OPUS, the new corpus offers 27,775,663 words in Arabic and 30,808,480 in English. Experimental results on sample data indicate that the PPM-based and sentence length technique for sentence alignment on this corpus improves accuracy of alignment compared to sentence length alone

Studies in Historical Documents from Nepal and India

study of religion|indology|anthropology|history|tibetolog

Central Asian Sources and Central Asian Research

In October 2014 about thirty scholars from Asia and Europe came together for a conference to discuss different kinds of sources for the research on Central Asia. From museum collections and ancient manuscripts to modern newspapers and pulp fiction and the wind horses flying against the blue sky of Mongolia there was a wide range of topics. Modern data processing and data management and the problems of handling five different languages and scripts for a dictionary project were leading us into the modern digital age. The dominating theme of the whole conference was the importance of collections of source material found in libraries and archives, their preservation and expansion for future generations of scholars. Some of the finest presentations were selected for this volume and are now published for a wider audience

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

Studies in Historical Documents from Nepal and India

study of religion|indology|anthropology|history|tibetolog