Collaborative Research: International Digital Sanskrit Library Integration

合作研究：国际数字梵文图书馆整合拟议的项目旨在开发一个全球分布的、基于互联网的梵文数字图书馆，梵文是世界上最丰富的文化承载语言之一。同时，该项目将探索某些其他非罗马文字（如阿拉伯语）的OCR和语言属性，因为所开发的技术在图像识别和其他语言层面上是通用的。由于现有的信息处理技术主要是在罗马字母的环境中发展起来的，因此目前对许多语言的数字内容的在线访问受到严重阻碍。梵语单词有上下文语音变化，是一种高度屈折的语言。这些特性使得识别单词边界和搜索文本材料变得困难，并且需要开发音韵学和屈折变化软件。最大限度地利用梵文和其他广泛使用的文本的数字图书馆需要克服有关文字和编码、音韵学、语法（屈折、粘合结构、派生）和词汇的语言问题。该项目整合了目前独立的项目，以创建梵文数字档案，数字词典和语言软件；并探索文本编码标准，以增强古代和中世纪手稿的访问。该项目还将推进OCR技术、显示软件和兼容unicode的文本编辑软件。该项目开发的工具和技术将为获取扫描的梵文和其他文本提供强大的新方法，并将使以前只有训练有素的专家才能获得的作品广泛使用。这种访问对学生、学者和关注历史和一般语言学、哲学和宗教研究、药理学和医学、科学史和数学以及南亚的一般历史和文学等领域的广大公众具有深远的价值。

0535038Govindaraju, VeugopalSUNY, BuffaloCollaborative Research: International Digital Sanskrit Library IntegrationThe proposed project aims to develop a globally distributed, internet-based, digital library in Sanskrit, one of the worlds richest culture-bearing languages. At the same time, the project will explore OCR and language attributes of certain other none Roman scripts, such as Arabic, as the technologies to be developed are generic at the image recognition and other linguistic levels. Online access to digital content of many languages is at present severely hampered because available information processing technologies have developed primarily in the environment of the Roman alphabet. Sanskrit words have contextual phonetic variation and is a highly inflected language. These properties make discerning word boundaries and search of textual materials difficult, and requires the development of phonological and inflectional software.. Maximizing the utility of digital libraries of Sanskrit and a number of other widely used texts involves overcoming linguistic problems concerning script and encoding, phonology, grammar (inflection, agglutinative structures, derivation), and lexicon.This project integrates currently independent projects to create Sanskrit digital archives, digital lexica, and linguistic software; and explores text-encoding standards to enhance ancient and medieval manuscript access. The project will also advance OCR technology, display software, and Unicode-compliant text-editing software. Tools and techniques developed in this project will provide powerful new methods of access to scanned Sanskrit and other texts and will make widely available works that were previously available only to highly-trained specialists. This access will be profoundly valuable to students, scholars, and the wider public concerned with such fields as historical and general linguistics, philosophy and religious studies, pharmacology and medicine, history of science and mathematics, and general history and literature of South Asia.