Mellel XML to transliterated English?

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ecbrown
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Mellel XML to transliterated English?

Post by ecbrown »

Dear Mellel Forum Readers,

Yamim Noraim are here, and I would love to "translate" some of Davka's texts into transliterated English.

Being a Hebrew beginner, I am interested in making all sorts of siddurim, haggadot, etc. so that we can all participate comfortably. I often look at XeTeX, but I just can't get it set up.

I am addicted to Mellel in a big way. Does anyone have any creative thoughts on using the "XML format / XSLT stuff that I don't know about" to spit out transliterated English? I am inspired by Artscroll's siddur.

Best regards, Shana tova,

Eric
jannuss
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Post by jannuss »

Eric,

Two answers for you:

First, why re-invent the wheel? There are lots of transliterations available. Here are a few I got off Google [haven't checked any of them]

http://www.siddur.org/
ttp://www.utah.edu/hillel/siddur.htm
http://home.comcast.net/~judaism/Siddur ... uction.htm
etc., etc.

Second, I suspect that any simple one-to-one conversion [MEM+HIRIK = me, MEM+HOLAM = mo, and so on] will prove very unsatisfactory. You'd need a sophisticated translation program to do it properly.

What I suggest you do is get what you want from one of the sites above and modify it to meet your needs.

Finally, to answer the question you didn't ask: how best to organize things using Mellel?
The tendency is to use Columns [Sections], Hebrew in the right column, English in the left. Unfortunately, there are two problems here:
- there's no way yet to control the position of the column dividing line. Mellel will place it in the center of the page. Since Hebrew text is much more terse than English, this can be an issue.
- there is no way yet to force Mellel to coordinate column flow [e.g. force paragraph two in the right column to start exactly parallel to paragraph two in the left column]. You have to do this manually.

The (less than perfect, but workable) solution is to use tables until Mellel's columns are improved.

Janet
Ori Redler
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Re: Mellel XML to transliterated English?

Post by Ori Redler »

ecbrown wrote:Dear Mellel Forum Readers,

Yamim Noraim are here, and I would love to "translate" some of Davka's texts into transliterated English.

Being a Hebrew beginner, I am interested in making all sorts of siddurim, haggadot, etc. so that we can all participate comfortably. I often look at XeTeX, but I just can't get it set up.

I am addicted to Mellel in a big way. Does anyone have any creative thoughts on using the "XML format / XSLT stuff that I don't know about" to spit out transliterated English? I am inspired by Artscroll's siddur.

Best regards, Shana tova,

Eric
The best way to do that is probably using the Find and Replace option, creating a FindSet with Find Actions that do the work. I've checked this a bit. It is, prima facie, doable and can even produce nice results, but it must be carefully planned and executed.
Ori Redler from RedleX
jannuss
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Location: Israel

Re: Mellel XML to transliterated English?

Post by jannuss »

Ori Redler wrote:The best way to do that is probably using the Find and Replace option, creating a FindSet with Find Actions that do the work. I've checked this a bit. It is, prima facie, doable and can even produce nice results, but it must be carefully planned and executed.
Sorry Ori, I beg to differ.

Consider the syllable "sha," it can be represented as
-- SHIN + KAMATZ
-- SHIN + PATACH
-- SHIN + DAGESH + KAMATZ
-- SHIN + DAGESH + PATACH
and the syllable may be followed by a HAY
-- SHIN + KAMATZ with HAY
-- SHIN + PATACH with HAY
-- SHIN + DAGESH + KAMATZ with HAY
-- SHIN + DAGESH + PATACH with HAY
but, of course, this applies only if the HAY has no vowel of its own.

And that's a relatively simple rule.
How would you write a Find Set for final CHET?

Maybe it is doable, but I think you'd go mad before you got it all to work correctly.

Janet
Prion
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Re: Mellel XML to transliterated English?

Post by Prion »

jannuss wrote:
Ori Redler wrote: Consider the syllable "sha," it can be represented as
-- SHIN + KAMATZ
-- SHIN + PATACH
-- SHIN + DAGESH + KAMATZ
-- SHIN + DAGESH + PATACH
and the syllable may be followed by a HAY
-- SHIN + KAMATZ with HAY
-- SHIN + PATACH with HAY
-- SHIN + DAGESH + KAMATZ with HAY
-- SHIN + DAGESH + PATACH with HAY
but, of course, this applies only if the HAY has no vowel of its own.
This is all.....greek to me.

Sorry, I couldn't resist... :D

PS: Thinking about it, what does this phrase allude to?
jannuss
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Re: Mellel XML to transliterated English?

Post by jannuss »

Prion wrote:This is all.....greek to me.

Sorry, I couldn't resist... :D

PS: Thinking about it, what does this phrase allude to?
according to http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gre1.htm

"t’s usually attributed to William Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar: “Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me”. But virtually the same phrase had been used the year before (1600) by another Elizabethan playwright, Thomas Dekker: “I’ll be sworn he knows not so much as one character of the tongue. Why, then it’s Greek to him”. Actually, the phrase is older than both of them: it comes from a Medieval Latin proverb “Graecum est; non potest legi” (It is Greek; it cannot be read). Both the Latin and the English meant then just what the phrase does now, to refer to something that is unintelligible. As an aside, the Spanish version of this proverb is “hablar en griego”, which is commonly said to be the origin of the word gringo, so somebody who is called a gringo is literally accused of speaking Greek and hence being unintelligible."

And, one the subject of not being able to resist things, one more reply to Ori:

I'd like to know what kind of a Find Set he'd write to translate
ZAYIN-DAGESH-ALEPH-HOLAM-TAF to "zot"

Janet
ecbrown
Got the styles thing figured out
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Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2006 4:07 am

Post by ecbrown »

jannuss wrote:Eric,

Two answers for you:

First, why re-invent the wheel? There are lots of transliterations available. Here are a few I got off Google [haven't checked any of them]

http://www.siddur.org/
ttp://www.utah.edu/hillel/siddur.htm
http://home.comcast.net/~judaism/Siddur ... uction.htm
etc., etc.
Your quoted works are restricted by copyright. It is doubtful that they can be redistributed even under "Fair Use."
jannuss
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Posts: 843
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:35 am
Location: Israel

Post by jannuss »

ecbrown wrote:Your quoted works are restricted by copyright. It is doubtful that they can be redistributed even under "Fair Use."
Eric, I said that I hadn't checked them, but I went now and took a look.

The last two are copyrighted, but available for non-commercial use.

The first appears to be for sale, but elsewhere on the net the author seems to be calling it donation-ware.

And, since you use DAVKA, you should check out their transliterated Siddur.

Janet
ecbrown
Got the styles thing figured out
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2006 4:07 am

Post by ecbrown »

Hi Janet,

Thanks for your comments. I have the Artscroll Siddur, and it is very nice. There are some things that I want to change, however. Also, I want the freedom to redistribute as I see fit. It's a big deal to me.

I see you are from Israel. Copyright seems to be less, umm... appreciated. If I recall correctly from my time there, there is only one legitimate version of Microsoft Word in the whole country. Yet it seems that everyone has it installed on their computers. :P

My question is not about a task-specific workflow. It was more intended as a general question on if it is possible to take an arbitrary text (e.g. Shulchan Aruch, which is NOT transliterated by Davka) and turn it into a transliterated alphabet.

Also, I have friends who speak Russian as a native language, and I had hoped that such a general "transliterator" could be used to make custom texts in English, Cyrillic, etc. in a format that I choose. I am not married, so there is no reason to have husband/wife prayers in my little book.

I am seldom happy with the choice of syllables that others use. For example, I would not write "Eloheinu." The "hei" is somewhat arbitrary in English. I would rather it be Elohaynu. Now this I could do find and replace. Also, what about Ashkenazic vs. Sephardic pronunciation?

Who are my guests for Shabbat? What is their native language? And then, I could print out an appropriate version. It is something of a "dream" or a hope. Your and Ori's reply seem to suggest that it is not so simple.

Best regards,

Eric
jannuss
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Posts: 843
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Location: Israel

Post by jannuss »

ecbrown wrote:Also, I want the freedom to redistribute as I see fit.
I do take copyright seriously -- I've "published" a number of booklets that I've copyrighted (as two of the transliterated Siddurim are) with permission to use for non-commercial purposes only. If your purposes are commercial, the first url I gave offers very reasonable rates.
Your and Ori's reply seem to suggest that it is not so simple.
very unsimple

Just one more example: you'd have to include logic to handle YOD-HAY-VAV-HAY as well as YOD-YOD.

Janet
JLW
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Siddur Ba-Eir Hei-Teiv --- The Transliterated Siddur

Post by JLW »

jannuss wrote:
ecbrown wrote:Your quoted works are restricted by copyright. It is doubtful that they can be redistributed even under "Fair Use."
Eric, I said that I hadn't checked them, but I went now and took a look.

The last two are copyrighted, but available for non-commercial use.

The first appears to be for sale, but elsewhere on the net the author seems to be calling it donation-ware.

And, since you use DAVKA, you should check out their transliterated Siddur.

Janet
Hi.

You folks are talking about my website (http://www.Siddur.org) and my work, "Siddur Ba-Eir Hei-Teiv --- The Transliterated Siddur".

I began this transliteration in 1991 and have periodically expanded and updated it ever since. It was intended to be an appendix or companion to my book The Synagogue Survival Kit, which was completed in 1994 and published in 1997; but the publisher was not interested in including the transliteration. (http://SynagogueSurvivalKit.com)

I then offered my transliteration to the major Hebrew-English Siddur publishers; but back in the 1990's none of them could see the writing on the wall. Most couldn't see any need for transliteration. Others objected on theological grounds, afraid that providing a complete transliteration would suggest that learning the Hebrew alphabet was not a religious necessity.

So in February 1997, I self-published "Siddur Ba-Eir Hei-Teiv --- The Transliterated Siddur" on the internet. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first complete (more or less) transliteration available in any form.

I would not have spent my time re-inventing the wheel had any wheel been available. (In fact, my whole book began as a pamphlet written only to help a friend, because there was nothing like 'The Synagogue Survival Kit' available for sale back then.)

Since then, many publishers of orthodox siddurim, including Chabad and even ArtScroll, have come around to recognizing the need for transliteration; but they have made quite different choices than I did, so that "Siddur Ba-Eir Hei-Teiv --- The Transliterated Siddur" is still the most useful for many beginners. (C.f., underlining of accented syllables, separating syllables with hyphens, using columns rather than interleaving line-by-line, easy-to-read letter choices via deliberate linguistic imprecision, color-coding, etc.) (Plus there's the advantage of being free for personal use.)

On the other hand, it would be nice to have it in the convenient format of a hardcover book. (Anybody here want to publish it in book form?)

Yes it is copyrighted; however I have published a blanket license to all invididuals for private study, as follows:

The Transliterated Siddur is intended to help Jews who are learning to recite the traditional prayers or to follow along with a service. Permission is granted to individuals to print or download pages for private study and for insertion into the corresponding pages of their Hebrew-English Siddur.

I've never called this work "donation-ware" per se. (I think that implies that one has no right to use it unless one donates. Is that so?) However, the website has a PayPal link so that donations in appreciation for The Transliterated Siddur may be made to my synagogue, The Adams Street Shul (http://www.AdamsStreet.org).

On the website I also have Publishing Agreements and Distribution Agreements (http://siddur.org/contracts/contracts.htm)which may be useful to people who want to incorporate my transliterations in their own published work, or who want to publish derivative works based on my work (i.e., modified transliterations starting out with mine). There are now a few dozen each of publishers and distributors.

My intention is to be helpful, so if none of those standard agreements suits your needs, let me know what would.

--- Jordan Lee Wagner
Jordan@WebJew.org
Jordan@Siddur.org
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