First of all, I would like to convert some existing Korean translations into the Bilara format. I have already obtained the translator’s permission for this project.
Could you please provide the guidelines for creating Bilara-compatible files? Specifically, I have questions regarding segment alignment:
Merged Sentences: Sometimes, two Pali segments are merged into a single Korean sentence. How should I handle the segment IDs in this case?
Changed Sentence Order: There are instances where the sentence order in the Korean translation differs from the original Pali.
What is the standard protocol for mapping these segments?
The CC0 license explained in the guide in particular will be relevant
Regarding the translation nuances you asked about, I didn’t see specific answers in the guide unfortunately. @carmi maybe an FAQ might be good to have? If one doesn’t already exist somewhere
I also didn’t see it in a quick search of the thread, but I might’ve missed something
As far as I know, you’d use the first one and then leave the next ones blank. An example I recently looked at was SN12.24:13.1 (and a few other lines in that sutta). Here’s a link to its Bilara JSON file that has the blanks.
A translator would have a more “official” answer than that, that’s just what I have seen
That’s an interesting one; I’d be curious to know too
I previously sent an email to Bhante Sujato (sujato@gmail.com), but I haven’t received a reply yet. I was wondering if Bhante is currently away or if he is difficult to reach via email at the moment?
I would like to share that I have already secured the copyright permission for this Korean translation under the ‘CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International’ license. In particular, the permission was granted with a special provision that the translation could be presented in alignment (side-by-side) with the original Pali text. Since this aligns perfectly with the Bilara system’s structure, I am very keen to move forward with the conversion.
That permission is not compatable with the policy on SuttaCentral.net for Bilara translations. They must be CC0.
You are of course welcome to align them and publish them on your own. However unless there is a policy change you can’t publish them on SuttaCentral.net. Sorry this wasn’t made more clear.
Oh, I made a mistake in the translation. To clarify, the special provision states that a sentence-by-sentence comparison is possible. This was designed with the Bilara system in mind.
Is this special provision still insufficient, making a CC0 license mandatory? Could you explain the reasoning behind this? My understanding is that a CC0 license allows anyone to use the work for commercial purposes, but I believe many translators would prefer their work to be used strictly for non-commercial purposes. ()
You can read about this on the licensing page on the main site.
It’s really for Bhante @Sujato to explain his reasoning. But as someone who re-uses Bilara data (not for commercial purposes) I appreciate the license. I know that no matter what I do I’m not infringing on anything.
I know that some translators prefer to let anyone spread their translations in any way at all, even if that means charging for them. And of course there are translators who make their translations available commercially only. It generally doesn’t make them any money, but traditional publishers will only invest the time and money into projects when they know they will have an exclusive right to publish.
Having a translation available as CC0 means that anyone can distribute it in any way they like. If someone abuses this and over-charges, someone else is free to come along and sell the same translation at cost.
If your goal is spreading the Dhamma to all people regardless of their ability to pay, including those who are willing to pay for physical copies, then CC0 is a great option.
I now clearly understand your intention. It is a bit disappointing, however, to hear that SuttaCentral cannot support Bilara for translations that are not CC0, as CC0 cases are not very common. I hope that even if a translation is not CC0, it could still be provided via Bilara if the translator has given explicit permission to do so. ()
By line of text translated, probably the majority of Pali into English is the equivalent of CC0 because of all of the PTS translations that are now in the public domain. The down side of those is that they are quite outdated. The advantage of CC0 is that the day they are published the world has the chance to spread them far and wide using any method that does the job, even if it means charging something.
EDIT TO ADD: I also believe that Bhante had always intended people to start fresh with translations on Bilara and not try to chop up existing translations.
Another point that should be mentioned—the question may not apply for older translations, though: SuttaCentral will not host a translation that has been created with the help of AI, neither as Bilara translation nor as legacy translation. Just to make this clear.
If anyone knows how the Bilara system handles cases where the sentence order of the Pāḷi original and the translation do not match, I would appreciate a further explanation. ()
Well, they just do not match. This happens because different languages do have different syntax rules; especially in verses the Pali sometimes uses irregular syntax, for example to fit the meter. So sometimes, segments are “cross-matching”, if that is an expression to describe it. But mostly, everything stays within the same verse (i.e., mostly four-line verses).
In any case, the result should be a translation that is readable and does make sense in the target language, not an adaptation of the target language to the Pali grammar and syntax in order to get the segments matching.
So you can say, sometimes the match is aproximate, not exact.
