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

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.

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