From Pattern to Interpretation. Using Colibri Core to Detect Translation Patterns in the Peshitta.

Mathias Coeckelbergs


Abstract
This article presents the first results of the CLARIAH-funded project ‘Patterns in Translation: Using Colibri Core for the Syriac Bible’ (PaTraCoSy). This project seeks to use Colibri Core to detect translation patterns in the Peshitta, the Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible. We first describe how we constructed word and phrase alignment between these two texts. This step is necessary to succesfully implement the functionalities of Colibri Core. After this, we further describe our first investigations with the software. We describe how we use the built-in pattern modeller to detect n-gram and skipgram patterns in both Hebrew and Syriac texts. Colibri Core does not allow the creation of a bilingual model, which is why we compare the separate models. After a presentation of a few general insights on the overall translation behaviour of the Peshitta, we delve deeper into the concrete patterns we can detect by the n-gram/skipgram analysis. We provide multiple examples from the book of Genesis, a book which has been treated broadly in scholarly research into the Syriac translation, but which also appears to have interesting features based on our Colibri Core research.
Anthology ID:
2022.lrec-1.454
Volume:
Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
Month:
June
Year:
2022
Address:
Marseille, France
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Frédéric Béchet, Philippe Blache, Khalid Choukri, Christopher Cieri, Thierry Declerck, Sara Goggi, Hitoshi Isahara, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Hélène Mazo, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis
Venue:
LREC
SIG:
Publisher:
European Language Resources Association
Note:
Pages:
4270–4274
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.454
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Mathias Coeckelbergs. 2022. From Pattern to Interpretation. Using Colibri Core to Detect Translation Patterns in the Peshitta.. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, pages 4270–4274, Marseille, France. European Language Resources Association.
Cite (Informal):
From Pattern to Interpretation. Using Colibri Core to Detect Translation Patterns in the Peshitta. (Coeckelbergs, LREC 2022)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.454.pdf