Digitising (Romanian) Cyrillic using Transkribus: new perspectives

In this paper we discuss the application of the software platform Transkribus (transkribus.eu), an AI-assisted tool for Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), to 16th century Romanian manuscript and printed sources using Cyrillic scripts. After an overview of the basic functionality of the HTR technology and Transkribus, we discuss the Romanian and bilingual Slavonic-Romanian sources we used, give an insight on training specific and generic as well as smart (i.e. transliterating from Cyrillic into Latin script) models, evaluate their performance and discuss implications of HTR for philological research in the Digital Age. We conclude with an outlook on future research perspectives.

Sergiu Moraru – 75 de ani de la naștere: moștenire enormă lăsată, dar recunoștință…?

Sergiu Moraru – outstanding personality of the culture of the Republic of Moldova, appreciated by both guild colleagues and natives. The flame of memory remains forever alive as long as there is a child who opens his book, says his name or remembers the moments spent together. Enormous thanks to the collaborators of the Institute of Romanian Philology „Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu”, for which October 10 is a reason to take refuge in the creation of the folklorist. The hope that the day will come when we will read Sergiu Moraru’s books in Latin script does not leave us.

Normalization of Transliterated Mongolian Words Using Seq2Seq Model with Limited Data

The huge increase in social media use in recent years has resulted in new forms of social interaction, changing our daily lives. Due to increasing contact between people from different cultures as a result of globalization, there has also been an increase in the use of the Latin alphabet, and as a result a large amount of transliterated text is being used on social media. In this study, we propose a variety of character level sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) models for normalizing noisy, transliterated text written in Latin script into Mongolian Cyrillic script, for scenarios in which there is a limited amount of training data available. We applied performance enhancement methods, which included various beam search strategies, N-gram-based context adoption, edit distance-based correction and dictionary-based checking, in novel ways to two basic seq2seq models. We experimentally evaluated these two basic models as well as fourteen enhanced seq2seq models, and compared their noisy text normalization performance with that of a transliteration model and a conventional statistical machine translation (SMT) model. The proposed seq2seq models improved the robustness of the basic seq2seq models for normalizing out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words, and most of our models achieved higher normalization performance than the conventional method. When using test data during our text normalization experiment, our proposed method which included checking each hypothesis during the inference period achieved the lowest word error rate (WER = 13.41%), which was 4.51% fewer errors than when using the conventional SMT method.

Preparation of new textbooks for Azerbaijan primary schools in the years of 1920-1931

The proclaming of the Azerbaijani language as the main language was one of the most important changes in the reform of new schools in Azerbaijan in the 1920s. Preparation of textbooks in the native language for primary schools has become one of the actual issues. The development of national culture depended on the application level of the mother tongue. The purpose of the research is to study preparation of new textbooks for Azerbaijan primary schools in the years of 1920-1931. It was not possible to develop national schools without creating textbooks and additional teaching resources in the national language. It was difficult to develop new textbooks in all subjects for all groups (classes) in a short period. There were various reasons of the difficulties: 1) lack of professionals and teaching staff for designing textbooks in all subjects; 2) lack of scientific terminology in Biology, Physics, Mathematics other subjects; 3) lack of experience in the field of printing and publishing issues; 4) lack of professional translators; 5) the Arabic alphabet which hinders cultural progress, etc. The article identifies the nature of these difficulties and analyzes the solution methods. Textbooks for primary schools based on the new Turkish alphabet (Latin script) are analyzed in the article. In 1922, the New Turkish Alphabet Committee was established under the Central Excutive Commission (CEC) of Azerbaijan. Then Jalil Mammadzadeh, Mammadagha Shahtakhtli and others were also appointed to the committee. The committee organized its activities in three directions: 1) editorial and publishing department; 2) training and science department; 3) organizational department. As a result, a lot of issues regarding the compatibility of the new Latin alphabet with our language, harmony, and pronunciation were discussed; and finally, on July 22, 1922, it was decided to switch from the Arabic alphabet into the new Latin alphabet.

Aljamiado Literature: The Problem of Definition

The scope of the term “aljamiado literature” is still open to discussion because it is defined differently by scholars in Russia and beyond. In the ‘strict’ literal meaning, the term “aljamiado literature” covers the literature in Spanish written in Arabic script. Its texts were mostly created by the Moriscos (or crypto-Muslims for Spanish people) after the Reconquista and before their expulsion (1609–1614), i. e. mainly during the 16th century.In a broader sense, “aljamiado literature” is defined as the literature of Spanish Muslims in general, and in this case it is meant to include both Arabic and Latin scripts. And it refers therefore not only to the literature of the Moriscos before their expulsion, but also relates to that written after their expulsion in Latin script, as well as to the texts produced, also in Latin script, by the Spanish Muslims before the Reconquista known in literary culture as Mudéjars. This broader definition covers the period from the mid-15th century until late 17th century.Sure, using the term “aljamiado literature” to denote the texts of both the Mudéjars and the Moriscos, i. e. all the texts of Spanish Muslims that had to live outside Al-Andalus, is absolutely correct, but at the same time this raises doubts about whether we may employ the terms “aljamiado literature” or “aljamiado literature of the Moriscos” for describing all the phenomena mentioned above. In this article, taking into account relevant cultural and historical circumstances which shaped this literary phenomenon and related concepts we have described in detail this contradictory usage of the term “aljamiado literature” and suggested a more adequate definition of its scope.

Problematika Transliterasi Al-Qur’an

This article will discuss the problems of transliteration of the Qur’an based on the SKB2M Republic of Indonesia which does not provide detailed guidance on the transfer of the Qur’anic letter into Latin script (Indonesia). So that it can make readers who are illiterate the Qur’an unable to recognize the Qur’anic letter because of the different spelling directions. For this reason, this article will present an alternative transcription guide specifically designed to transcribe the Qur'an so as to help the illiterate of the Qur'an to have the spirit of learning to read the Qur'an.

The interrelationship between scriptal and linguistic variation in notary signatures of Greek contracts from late antique Egypt

This study investigates linguistic and scriptal variation in notary signatures found in late antique contracts from Egypt, seeking to identify and interpret the potential relationship between choices in language and script. To answer this, theoretical concepts and methods from sociolinguistics, social semiotics, and multilingual studies are used, with the objective of adding a new, more linguistically-oriented perspective to existing research on notarial signatures. On the one hand, this research demonstrates how the Latin script seems to restrict notaries, resulting in transliterated Greek signatures with very homogeneous content. The familiarity of notaries with the Greek language and writing is, on the other hand, reflected in signatures written in the Greek alphabet, which are much more diverse and at times adjusted to the circumstances under which specific documents were composed. Even if notaries seem to lack confidence in freely producing text in the Latin script, they choose to do so due to its functional values, which are conveyed and perceived visually. Latin letters create an association between signatories and Roman law, adding to the trustworthiness and prestige of the signatures. Differentiating between script and language allows us to understand how the Latin script maintained the connotations that formerly accompanied the Latin language, gradually replacing it in the form of transliterated passages, at a time when the language was disappearing from papyrological documentation. In this sense, sociolinguistics, and especially social semiotics, prove useful when dealing with visual aspects of language in papyri, as they prevent their functions and meanings from being overlooked.

Office Politics: Tatarstan’s Presidency and the Symbolic Politics of Regionalism

This article explores developments in center-region relations between the Russian federal government and the Republic of Tatarstan, a federal subject of the Russian Federation. I argue that instrumentalist accounts are unable to satisfactorily explain several key moments in Tatarstan’s relations with the federal center, and that a focus on symbolic politics provides important analytical leverage. I examine three such episodes: aborted plans to introduce a Latin script for the Tatar language in 1999, the expiration of treaty-based relations and the assault on the region’s Tatar-language education policy in 2017, and the institution of the presidency – which exists to this day. In all three cases, interest-based explanations alone fail to account for what actually happened, whereas ideational explanations can help explain and interpret regional leaders’ actions. This has important implications for how we understand regional political dynamics in Russia amidst conditions of centralization.