[sword-devel] How about the OT's standard versification at Sword ?

[Chris Little]

Jonathon Blake wrote:
> Chris Little wrote:
> 
> 
>>don't think I could have made the hedge more clear.
> 
> 
>>This is incorrect.
> 
> 
> What you appear to have forgotten is that verses end in different
> places. What is one sentence in one translation, with one v11n scheme
> could be two or three sentences in another translation,
> [I'm transitioning between computers, otherwise I would copy an
> example from a Chinese translation showing two or three sentences,
> where the KJV has one sentence.

What does this have to do with anything? The assertion made by you and 
CNR were that I would be unable to encode a Bible in a langauge that I 
do not know. Remember, my intent is to NOT alter the v11n system.

I can promise you that I know all of the aspects of translating between 
v11n systems. That said, who cares how many sentences in one translation 
represent the same information content of some other number of sentences 
in another translation? Can I guess that you actually meant to make some 
reference to verses in different translations being split differently, 
so that a verse in one translation might be split across multiple verses 
in another translation that uses a different v11n system?

>>Douay-Rheims. I don't think I understand the question.
> 
> It uses a v11n scheme that is somewhat different from that of the KJV.
>  It takes some getting used to, but people can adapt.
>
> In a like manner,  people can adjust to a different v11n scheme in
> their Bible study software, if the differences are explained in the
> documentation.

Okay, first, the KJV and DR v11n systems are radically different. 
According to a quick count (which might fail to take account of certain 
verse unions), there are 3823 v11n differences--over 10% of the verses 
in the text.

Second, does it actually make sense to you to tell users that they need 
to adjust the way they use Bibles in their native languages? Does it 
make a sense to you to tell Catholic, Orthodox, French, or Hebrew OT 
users that they need to forget about all the references they know and 
convert them to the system used by Protestant English Bibles? I'm afraid 
that, although paternalism and sectarian bias may be perfectly 
acceptable to some, it is not something we will engage in intentionally.

>>My argument is that it is better to use the CORRECT v11n than a mutilated Bible with a foreign v11n.
> 
> Which come back to no translation is better than a possibly mutilated one.  

Huh? Are you reading your own words?

Yes. We'll pass on the mutilated translations, thanks.

To the point, we don't want altered translations when the unaltered 
versions are readily available. Maybe you don't realize that what CNR 
did was take a Bible that is online and change that. Why would we accept 
that rather than just use the unaltered source?

> For the Bible modules I've made, the hardest part has been proof
> reading them.  Comparing the e--text with hard copy, and then
> rechecking the text is the Bible Study Software it is for, with the
> hard copy.

We explicitly do not engage in converting texts from print sources. We 
do not keyboard. We do not OCR. We depend on other parties making texts 
available to us (or making them available publicly where we can get them).

>> You can use ANY reference scheme, but you should make some effort
>> to identify what it is,
> 
> OSIS has provisional tags for marking the v11n scheme to be used. 
> [The current issue is how to tag things so that a text can be easily
> switched between v11n schemes.  When that is done, the v11n schemes
> will no longer be considered to be "provisional".]

I think you're not quite understanding things here. Hand-input v11n data 
for translations that use standard v11n schemes will not be accepted. 
Data for converting between standard v11n schemes is already known.

Encoders need simply encode Bibles CORRECTLY and the software will 
handle the rest.

Furthermore, you actually could encode a Bible text in OSIS with as many 
v11n systems as you wanted, using distinct work elements/prefixes. (For 
Sword, we would simply delete all non-native v11n data from the module, 
however.)

>>>And the timeline for this conversion is?
>>
>>When it's done.
> 
> The Debian Philosophy.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was quoting John Carmack of id 
Software.

--Chris