Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

THL Toolbox > Essays > Creating an XML Essay for THL > Creating a Term Table

Creating a Term Table for Essays

Contributor(s): THL Staff.

Introduction

The Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL) asks scholars contributing essays on Tibetan Studies to contribute glossaries of Tibetan terms occurring in these essays, along with English translations of the terminology. In addition, other translation-equivalents into Sanskrit, or Chinese, may be specified. Finally, the glossary specifies the "type" of term - name of Buddhist Deity, place name, etc. These glossaries are used in THL’s publication of essays in JIATS, the Encyclopedias, and other areas of THL where essays or extended textual information are published.

These glossaries serve three important purposes in THL. Firstly, the allow us to deliver multiple views of essays in which users can see Tibetan terms rendered as precisely transliterated Tibetan terms (THL Extended WYlie), or in an easy to understand mix of phonetic renderings and English. Given the discrepancy between transliterated Tibetan and phonetic Tibetan, thiis allows scholars to have access to what they want, but everyone else to be able to read an essay and have some hope of pronouncing and hence remembering words. Secondly, it provides a rich, interactive glossary that readers can consult for each essay or monograph. Thirdly, we can use this glossary to markup essays automatically, and thus save a large amount of time while still retaining the power of labeling titles as titles, place names as place names, and so forth.

The interactive glossary provides all technical terms in an essay or translation in a tabular glossary. A user can order the glossary alphabetically by the Tibetan terms or English translations, as well as grouped by types (technical terms, place names, etc.). The glossary also allows us to automatically identify technical terms in the essay, and thus mark them up in XML - i.e. titles are identified as titles, personal names, as personal names, and so forth. This then allows us to show an essay with titles, personal names and so forth visually formatted in distinct ways, as well as search selectively only on titles, or only on personal names. Hence, while the glossary's compilation is somewhat timeconsuming initially, it saves considerable time on other tasks and creates the basis for important types of functionality.

General Guidelines

1. Typology of the glossary entries: in the "Type" column of the glossary table, you must enter the "designation" from the Type table. Do not type in anything else - use the EXACT spelling and case given in the designation column of the Type Table. In other words, type in "article", NOT "text article", type in "room", NOT "Room", and so forth. These designations are simple and easy to remember.
2. Date column: YYYY-YYYY. Do not specify month or day. At present, this is used for people’s birth and death dates, and the founding dates of organizations. For formatting dates, see
3. Variant? column: There are two possible entries for this column. If there are variant spellings of a foreign term or variant versions of a foreign name, these must follow each other consecutively in the term table. In the final column (the "Variant?" column) of all but the first term, insert an asterisk (*). This applies to terms, text titles, personal names, place names, monasteries, and organizations. Using a single asterisk (*) means that the row that has the asterisk represents an alternate spelling or version of the row immediately above it. For example, if you have two entries, chos kyi rgyal po and chos rgyal, they need to be listed one after the other. So, if chos kyi rgyal po was first, then the row immediately after it would have chos rgyal and that row would have the single asterisk in it.
   The double asterisk (**) is used in a similar way for two Tibetan terms given for a single English translation. Place the two terms in two consecutive rows in the table, and in the Variant? column of the second of the two rows, enter **. Example:
   At least in their early stages, they were the homes of individuals variously called “retreatant” (mtshams pa), “meditator” (sgom chen), “recluse” (gcig bu pa or dben sa pa), and of course “hermit” (ri khrod pa).
   In the term table, enter ** in the Variant? column of the dben sa pa entry (gcig bu pa is the entry in the immediately preceding row).
4. Text Titles: If at the first occurrence of a title there is a "henceforth" short title to be supplied in the parentheses after the Tibetan, that short title should go in the English column, in braces, after the English title. For example, if the author's text reads
   It is in The Clear Mirror of Royal Genealogy (rgyal rabs gsal ba'i me long; henceforth The Clear Mirror} that this point is made.
   In the term table, the English column would look like this:
   The Clear Mirror of Royal Genealogy {The Clear Mirror}
   If for some reason there is no English translation of the title but only a Tibetan or Sanskrit title is given along with its abbreviation, then the same principle applies and the title followed by the short title in braces should be entered in the appropriate language column. The full title with "henceforth …" in parentheses will be supplied by the stylesheet at the first occurrence after the Tibetan/Sanskrit, and then the short title will be used thereafter.
5. Multiple English Translations for a Single Foreign-Laguage Term: List both English translations in the "English" column, with a paragraph return between them. Only one translation will display in the article, however, so we need the author to specify which is the preferred translation.

Multiple Foreign-Language Terms with the Same English Translation

Glossary Entry Types

This is a list of types of glossary entries. For each unique item in the article, find the appropriate line below and enter its “Designation” in the “Type” column of the glossary table for that article. Most of the “designations” are straight-forward and easy to remember. The corresponding Word Style and previous abbreviation are for developers and reference.

Language types

Lang: marks the language of the term being stressed in the article. For example, an article on Tibetan Buddhism would presumably stress terms like "byang chub", etc. as primarily Tibetan terms, rather than the Sanskrit "bodhi", even though obviously byang chub is a translation originally of bodhi. In the lang column of the glossary, type in just the four letter abbreivation (tchi, teng, etc.).

List the terms one right after the other in the table. For all but the first term, in the "Variant" column, insert two asterisks (**).

The Actual Glossary Table

To do work, you need to download the Glossary Word Table, which is a Microsoft Word Table. The following is what the table looks like:

Categories that should be added to the THL markup in the future. Disregard this.

• Mongolian as a language
• ritual
• periodical
• publisher/printing house
• titles (of person, e.g., desi, or incarnation of the great assembly hall, etc.)
• lineage of lamas i.e., Dalai lamas, sba ri, etc. (when spoken of generically and separately from individual lamas’ names)
• art (e.g., names of paintings or series of paintings such as tsongkha gyéchu)
• festivals (Khardo Thünchö, Ganden Ngamchö)
• clan names (when not part of a personal name)
• temples that are in bigger monasteries (or any structural unit for that matter)
• art = eighty deeds of tsongkhapa

Provided for unrestricted use by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library