TIC Talk - UBS Translations

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Page 2 TIC TALK - UBS Translation Information Clearinghouse NewsletterNo. 59 2004The uniqueness of WIVUas a published database is thatit is tagged not just with wordform information but alsowith phrase- and clause-levelinformation. That means, forexample, that you can find allcases of fronted prepositionalphrases in the historicalwritings, or all cases of aclause with a qatal verb formfollowed by a clause with awe-qatal verb form in thePentateuch. The search in thescreenshot (right) is for acombination of two clauses,the first one with a nondeterminednoun followed byqatal 3s, and the secondbeginning with a yiqtol verb.As you may or may not beable to see in the screenshot,the functions of clauses are tagged,as well as cases of vocative,ellipsis, casus pendens, andmacrosyntactic signals (“andnow,” “therefore,” “we-hinneh,”etc.). Before working with theWIVU database, you should studythe introductory essays by ChristofHardmeier (in German) and EepTalstra (in English). Shortversions of these essays are in theprinted manual, but the electronicversions include much moreinformation. They appear in “MyLibrary” under the title “SESBEditor’s Introduction.”There are quite a few wrinklesto be ironed out. The most importantone is Help. I get nervouswhen I’ve constructed a searchthat looks exactly like the example,but has different results.This is true of almost everyexample in Talstra’s introduction,and is likely due to the fact thatthere is no detailed explanationabout all aspects of constructingqueries. Moreover, in what helpdoes exist, the application of somekey statements is often hard tomake out. For example, describingthe search option of specifying theallowable distance between twogiven words, the help file says:“You can define the words withinthe distance by means of alloptions of the lexeme and wordform panels.” All the words areclear, but what does it mean?(Well, I know now what it means,but only after prolonged contemplationand experimentation.)Some other areas needingimprovement: • It is sometimes amystery why certain results havebeen returned. Explanations ofhow syntactic tags were assignedis urgently needed, as well as theability to view the tagging of thetext. • Morphological searchingappears to be more limited thanwith the Logos BHS (no agreementoptions). • In a lexemesearch, homographs are labelled(1), (2), etc., without any indicationof which one might be whatyou’re looking for. There shouldbe glosses in the lookup list tohelp you choose which one youwant. • As stated in the introductorymaterials, the WIVU databasecontains complete information onthe phrase and clause levels onlyfor the books of Genesis to2 Kings. Problems of interface: •In the display of BHS, textwrappingseparates inseparableprepositions and conjunctionsfrom the following words, leavingthem hanging at the left. Even sofpasuq can occupy its own line. •The search dialogue can be keptopen (unlike the Logos morphologicalsearch dialogue), but itcannot be resized and is always ontop. Since it takes up almost thewhole screen, this feature ispractically useless.The publication of WIVU is apromising first step in makingavailable syntactic informationabout the Hebrew Bible. It is notperfectly presented; improvementswill be welcomed. In the meantime,the Forbes-Andersensyntactic (and some discourselevel)database is reportedly alsobeing prepared for publication byLogos. The tagging of that databaseis said to be complete, andwill provide an interesting point ofcomparison with WIVU. (There’salso said to be a Greek syntacticaldatabase in the Logos works.)
No. 59 2004TIC TALK - UBS Translation Information Clearinghouse Newsletter Page 3Critical ApparatusesAppearing for the first time incommercially available electronicform are the critical apparatuses ofBHS and NA 27 . The SESB textsare supplied with hyperlinks sothat you can view the critical noteswhile reading the text by placingyour cursor over the siglum. Thenote will pop up in a box thatdisappears as soon as you movethe cursor (see screenshots).Latin, but in NA 27 you can get quite helpful lengthier notes about theversions (see screenshot on Majority Text). You can also search on any ofthe sigla and get a list of all the verses for which a given manuscript/tradition is cited in the apparatus.In addition, you can open theapparatus in a separate windowand have it scroll with the text asyou move through it. By placingthe cursor over any siglum in theapparatus window, you can findout what it refers to. In BHS, youwill get only the bare bonesexpansion of the abbreviation inThere are, additionally, a number of extremely useful, but poorlydocumented, field search capabilities (brought to my attention by RubénGómez in his online review of SESB at http://www.bsreview.org/sesb.htm). For example, you can retrieve a list of all additions andinsertions, or all lectionary manuscript citations in the NA apparatus, orall OT quotes or disputed passages in NA 27 , as well as specify lexical ormorphological elements within those categories. BHS and its apparatushave a less useful set of fields for this capability.Conclusions: Anyone who uses the critical apparatus of BHS andNA 27 on a regular basis will find that SESB offers wonderfully expandedways of working with those resources, and will probably be willing (if notable) to pay the price–$280 (from Logos, www.logos.com) or 240 EUR(from the German Bible Society, www.bibelgesellschaft.de/shop). Withthe critical apparatuses, a good selection of modern versions in Europeanlanguages, as well as the potential that lies in the WIVU database, theGerman and Netherlands Bible Societies are to be congratulated for offeringan electronic product that is unlike any other available Bible software.
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