Features of the division

The translation or translations should be contained in a division of the body of the TEI file, with a type attribute identifying it as a translation division.

In the case of an edtion with multiple translations, each translation should be encoded in a separate div and might be subcategorized in some way. For instance, an edition might contain more than one translation into a single language, according to a particular typology; the translation divs could therefore bear subtype attributes with values such as "literal", "poetic", "free" and so forth. Perhaps more commonly, an edition might encode translations in more than one modern language, which would then be differentiated by means of xml:lang attributes. The person responsible for the translation can be indicated by the resp attribute. If the translation is ascribed to an external, published source, this can be indicated using the source attribute.

Parallel translations of a full text should be encoded as sibling, top-level divisions, with resp, subtype and xml:lang attributes to indicate the kind of translation. When there are separate translations for different parts of the text in an edition, theyt are most appropriately encoded using <div type="textpart"> as children of the translation division, rather than as separate top-level divisions. Each translation may have an apparatus as well. The correspondence between parts of the transcription and of the translation might be recorded in an attribute such as n (giving the number or letter of the corresponding section), or more formally, corresp, linking directly to the xml:id of a division containing the corresponding text.

Other means of differentiating multiple translations, using the various TEI attributes on div are imaginable.

Features of the translated text

As noted above, the translation is likely to require far fewer features of markup than the transcribed text itself. The features most commonly tagged in translations include:

• Restored text: (<supplied reason="lost">) to tag restored text (most often entire words or phrases, since the translation will seldom align with the original text more finely than this);
• Editor makes "subaudible" word manifest: (<supplied reason="subaudible">) to tag words or phrases added by way of clarification in the translation that were not present in the transcription;
• Editor's note: (note) to tag the editor's words that are not part of the translation per se, such as "i.e. 212 CE", or "unclear".
• Abbreviation fully expanded: (expan, ex) most often used to indicate names, if at all, abbreviated in the original;
• Lost characters (gap) to indicate significant spans of lacuna in the original text.

Responsibility for this section

1. Gabriel Bodard, author