Overview of Computer Supported Medieval Slavic Manuscript Studies in Bulgaria

Overview of Computer Supported Medieval Slavic
Manuscript Studies in Bulgaria

Milena
Dobreva

Institute of Mathematics and Informatics
dobreva@math.bas.bg

1999

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA

ACH/ALLC 1999

editor

encoder

Sara
A.
Schmidt

Background
The medieval Slavic manuscript heritage is rich and widely spread. The exact
number of Slavic manuscripts is unknown. Only in Bulgaria, the state-owned
repositories store about 8,000 manuscripts of Slavic origin.
These texts have been created in an interesting cultural setting. The use of
a vernacular language with many regional differences at the orthographic,
lexical and phrase-structure levels makes the medieval texts an important
source for the study of the diachronic and synchronic development of Slavic
languages. The fact that a comparison of 150 variants of a sentence from the
Gospel does not result in two ideal matches is a brilliant illustration of
the variety scale.
The application of computer tools to the medieval Slavic text studies could
facilitate research tasks, especially those, which require analysis of text
variants. This explains the interest of the specialists to the IT
applications.
This paper aims at presenting the state of the field in Bulgaria. It also
points to the basic unsolved problem - the development of proper text
encoding system, which will enable the encoding of the medieval Slavic texts
close to the originals.

First endeavors in the field
The first applications of IT to the medieval Slavic studies have not been
aimed at collecting and processing texts in electronic form, but rather to
collecting structured information about the manuscripts [Geurts et al.
87].
The creation of formal models was the basic
difficulty in the beginning. Due to the unique researchers' profiles and
interests, the views on the data to be stored and processed were
significantly different.
Initially, the samples of original texts were encoded in Latin
transliteration. This was a practical solution but it was unsatisfactory for
the specialists who would like to be able to represent the texts as close to
the original as it would be possible.

Current state
With the further development of information technologies and the spread of
Windows-based applications, a new stage of the work has been achieved. The
specialists' dream -- to see the text in a form close to the original,
already was viewed as easily reachable. The specialists were concerned with
the development of fonts presenting accurately the paleographic features
characteristic for different periods, schools or scribes. However, a major
problem -- that of creating adequate text encoding standard -- remained
unsolved. The problems with the creation of an encoding system are presented
thoroughly in [Birnbaum 96], but his encoding suggestions are still not
implemented in practice.
The difficulties in creating widely accepted encoding standard are caused by
several reasons:
1. The sets of graphemes appearing in different manuscripts are
different. In some cases the difference of graphemes represents
character differences; in other cases these were variants of the
same character.
2. The encoding of specific textual features (e.g. superscript,
subscript, inscript letters and abbreviations) is still debatable.
Some of the specialists insist on encoding normalized texts where all these features disappear. For
others, the encoding of the text in a form, which represents the
original as close as possible, is a must. But even if we have a
satisfactory encoding standard, we will need to build tools enabling
search within encoded texts. The 'normalization' approach leads to
better solution of the problem with text search, paying the price of
data loss.

A brief overview of 70 publications from 1995-1998 in the field of computer
processing of medieval Slavic manuscripts shows that 40 publications treat
text representation and processing, including TEI issues. Articles on data
base applications form the next largest group (10 publications). Multimedia,
AI applications and preservation issues appear in isolated cases. This study
was done on the material of [Birnbaum et al. 96], [Dobreva 98] and
publications by Bulgarian authors published in other editions (the complete
bibliography is published on [KNIGCHIJ-SCRIBE].
The major projects which were undertaken in Bulgaria up till now, include:
1. Experiments with data base applications for cataloguing
manuscripts [Geurts et al. 87].
2. Computer Repertory of Old Slavic Manuscripts
and Letters based on TEI-conformant description of
medieval manuscripts [Miltenova 98].
3. Quantitative study of orthographic variety [Dobreva, Dobrev
98].
4. Lexicographic study of the Psalter using the DBT system
[Camuglia 96].

Conclusions
Although the Bulgarian specialists already have practical experience in
different computer applications to the medieval Slavic studies, the basic
problem of developing internationally recognized encoding system is still
unsolved. Under these circumstances, the efforts to collect digital
resources are prone. This situation is unpleasant in general, and in
countries in transition with many economic problems is a real disaster.
Important characteristic of the work in the field is that the most
considerable effort is oriented towards text encoding. Real digitization
work is still not undertaken. This can be explained with the economic
difficulties of the Bulgarian institutions working in the field of medieval
manuscript heritage.
With the above in mind, we could expect that Slavic materials would still
remain underrepresented in electronic form compared to manuscripts belonging
to other written traditions.

References

D.
Birnbaum

A.
Bojadzhiev

M.
Dobreva

A.
Miltenova

Proceedings of the First International Conference
Computer Processing of Medieval Slavic Manuscripts, July 1995,
Blagoevgrad, S.

1996

D.
Birnbaum

Standardizing Characters, Glyphs, and SGML Entities for
Encoding Early Cyrillic Writing

Computer Standards and Interfaces

18

201-252
1996

M.
Camuglia

The Psalter, its Tradition and the Computer: a New
Method of Textual Analysis

Palaeobulgarica

XX
1
3-13
1996

M.
Dobreva

Text Variety in the Witnesses of Medieval Texts:
Proceedings of Int. Workshop, Sofia, September 1997

Sofia

1998

M.
Dobreva

D.
Dobrev

Orthographic Variety in Medieval Slavic Texts: How to
Study and Model It?

ALLC-ACH'98, Conference abstracts, July 5-10 1998,
Debrecen, Hungary

1998
36-38

A.
J.
Geurts

A.
Gruijs

J.
van Krieken

W.
R.
Veder

Codicography and Computer

Polata knigopisnaja

17-18

4-29
1987

The Website on Digitizing Slavic Manuscripts in
Bulgaria

<>

A.
Miltenova

Computer Repertory of Medieval Literature and
Letters

M.
Dobreva

Text Variety in the Witnesses of Medieval Texts:
Proceedings of Int. Workshop, Sofia, September 1997

Sofia

1998
138-149