[sword-devel] SWORD 1.6.x Localization (Ps 151)

Thu May 7 10:11:20 MST 2009

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 10:33 AM, jonathon <jonathon.blake at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 01:42, Greg Hellings  wrote:
>> as it is in my NRSV, as are 148-150.  There is no mention of 151, but I have no idea if it's one of the ones sort of wedged into their otherwise strange versification.
>
> There are two major v11n schemes for Psalms.  The one that Jews use,
> and the one that Protestants use.  The Jerusalem Bible lists both v11n
> schemes.

The same goes for other books.  However, if those are the two
divisions, clearly that leaves the other traditions using something
either between them, hybridized between them or different yet again.
It's quite clear that the Jerusalem Bible translators and editors took
great liberty in the identification and rearrangement of their
material.  There are quite a few places where verses, phrases, etc are
reorganized at the translator's whim, some of which I documented.

>
> Psalm  is not part of either v11n scheme.
>
>> Esther starts with Chapter 1 verses 1a through 1r which are also
> Any book that starts with Chapter 11 verse 2, and ends with Chapter
> 11, verse 1, with fifteen chapters between those two verses is going
> to be a problem.
>
>> Hosea presents its own challenge to the codifier where my print
>
> There are a couple of other books where the Jerusalem Bible uses its
> own v11n scheme --- one that is not congruent with the Vulgate, LXX,
> DR, Masoretic, or KJV.

However, the Jerusalem Bible seems to be a rather popular Bible which
I think we need to look towards supporting.

>
>> There seems to be no mention of the "Book of Odes" or other similar works in the Jerusalem Bible, nor the prayer of Manasseh.
>
> Neither of those books are considered to be useful, much less
> canonical, in Catholic Christianity. You won't find them in Catholic
> Bibles.
>
> Prayer of Manasseh,  1 Esdras, and 2 Esdras are found in Anglican
> Bibles --- those three books are canonical for the Church of England.
>
> As a general rule of thumb, Prayer of Manasseh is only includes in 2
> Chronicles, in Bibles that include _The Ethiopiac Canon of Eighty
> One_.
>
>
>>  but I think there's miles and miles to go before we can properly support a canon like the JB.
>
> The Jerusalem Bible is pretty easy to support.   The Ethiopiac Canon
> of Eighty One is far more challenging.

How do you say that?  If _The Ethiopiac Canon of Eighty One_ is a
well-defined canon, then supporting it should be easy.  The Jerusalem
Bible is not so well defined.  The real issue from our technical
standpoint is, e.g., what should be returned from a copy of the
Jerusalem Bible if the user asks for Daniel 3:27?  Or Esther 1:1?  Or
Hosea 2:7?  In each of those cases there are at lest two verses
(closer to 25 in the case of Esther 1:1) which are given each of those
labels in my print copy.  If we're trying to satisfy the requirement
that the program behaves and returns values in agreement with the
print copy, what do we do?

For cases like Hosea 2 or Daniel 6 where there is a 1-off or 2-off
distance, we could give all 2-3 verses in that range and just label
them according to both numberings present in the print.  In the case
of Daniel 2, it would be disconcerting to return 67 or so verses when
the user asked for a single verse.  Another option is to let the user
pick which of the versifications they want to use - then the user can
select that it should use the version that is parallel with the
Aramaic instead of with the LXX.  But in other cases this may not be
as straightforward (I doubt that any version other than the JB and its
descendants has Esther 1:1g) for a front-end to communicate to the
user what the options are.

>
>> I'd like to see it supported (and, consequently, a module of it be made available), but I don't even know where to begin with something like this even if the whole project was dedicated to supporting the JB directly!
>
> The "simplest" solution is to create a superset of v11n schemes, and
> assign a specific number to each verse in the superset.   Then write
> mappings from each v11n scheme to the superset.   All texts that call
> for Bibles need to provide both the v11n scheme, and the normal book,
> chapter, and verse.

I believe this is, more or less, the exact plan for the future when
mapping support is provided.  However, I don't see it addressing the
issue of one version with multiple numbering schemes available.  An
additional mechanic would need to be provided where a program could
flag the module as, "Use your built-in v11n choice A for this passage"
and then could flip to "Use your built-in v11n choice B for this other
passage" and then the module could internally use the mapping
mechanism to flip from A to its on-disk storage mechanism that calls
for B.  However, I don't know how the available options would be
exposed to the user and what would be considered best for the "native"
representation.  In the case of the JB Esther it doesn't actually run
from 11:2 to 11:1 with 18 chapters between, but rather from 1:1a to
11:1, it's just that each of the non-Hebrew verses is also given an
alternate verse number, in italics, that corresponds to the LXX verse
number for that passage.

>
> I'd also suggest throwing Bell, Sussanna, Song of the Three Young Men,
> and Greek Esther into books of their own.   (If the Canon of 81 is
> supported, create1 Merqab, 2 Merqab, and 3 Merqab, in addition to the
> 1 mac, 2 mac, 3, Mac, and 4 Mac. Also create both epistle of Clement,
> and 1 Clement.,   The two texts are different.   (I've forgotten which
> church canonised 1 Clement.  Also need EpLao, and 3 Corinthians.)

That is the proper way to do it for, example, KJVA or (I'd imagine)
NRSVA.  But that would be distinctly wrong for versions like the
Jerusalem Bible which do not split those 4 passages into separate
books but include them directly in the text of their works.  In the
case of Bell and Susanna, JB doesn't even put them in italics (like it
does with Song of the Three Young Men or Greek Esther additions) to
indicate their Greek-only presence.  They are simply given a footnote
at the beginning of chapter 13.  As for the other works you mention, I
only see 1/2 Maccabees in JB and none of the others.

It still seems clear, to me, that there are a large number of
technical difficulties as we climb outward in our search to support
everyone's canon.  I'm guessing a mapping mechanism will have to wait
until we have determined our full support extent and, even then, will
be non-trivial to support verses which are partially broken up in some
versions but not others and versions which include in their print
multiple versifications.

--Greg

>
> jonathon
>
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