Inviting alpha testing for the New Bilara! Calling all translators!

sabbamitta · July 26, 2026, 7:40am

I have still another point:

In the old Bilara there is the option to show or hide html for site texts (like here: methodology). I am always turning it on, for this is the easiest way to just copy links into my translation column and edit the link text, keep the rest.

But I remember that there were also translators who for their special purposes prefer the html to be hidden. I don’t know if that is still the case. For now in any case it is not possible to hide the html in the new Bilara.

Compare old Bilara:

There’s just a tickbox at the top of the column.

HongDa · July 28, 2026, 8:32am

Today’s update:

feat: implement navigation history state management and restore functionality.
feat: the search area remains visible throughout page scrolling in translation page.

sujato · July 29, 2026, 11:16pm

We’re dealing with a few remaining details, and hoping to launch next week. So don’t hold back!

HongDa · July 30, 2026, 4:29pm

This essentially involves rearranging the segment numbers, which is not currently supported.

But that’s as far as I could go with the test because I’m not sure how to save the first split that I attempted. Something that might have caused the error is that I didn’t bring up my translation and move the English into the new segment before I hit “confirm split” … perhaps the empty segment caused an exception to be thrown?

This might be a bug; I haven’t been able to reproduce it yet, but I will continue to monitor it.

HongDa · July 31, 2026, 12:15am

Today’s update:

feat: add real URLs to items in nav.html so that links can be opened with the middle mouse button or right-click.

sujato · July 31, 2026, 12:56am

I mean, ultimately any change can be made by hand-editing the JSON files, and can be implemented in Bilara. But the question is, is it worth it?

Now, generally speaking, the segment numbers in bilara-data follow the paragraph breaks. But this is more a matter of convenience than anything. There are cases in the Pali where I have changed the paragraph breaks, leaving the numbers stranded. It doesn’t really affect anything too much. And it has a benefit, in that it indicates that such a change has been made.

So as a general rule, that’s what I’d recommend: change the HTML if need be, leaving the segment numbers as-is.

But if there’s some special circumstance, we can look at that.

cdpatton · July 31, 2026, 5:44pm

I see your point; it isn’t necessary from a software POV. The segment ids just need to be unique (theoretically) so they can function as references for people and keys in the JSON hashes. And, thinking about it, I can also see that it would be a thorny programming problem. It would be pretty involved on the server side to make the changes and do it right in every situation. Merging segments will delete paragraph breaks, and splitting segments will create paragraph breaks when they involve two paragraphs.

Well, for myself and the tasks I will need to do, I can always do it “my way,” which is to insert or overwrite the files in the repo with my own export scripts. That may be the better option for the amount of material we need to add in Chinese.

sabbamitta · August 2, 2026, 4:36pm

I totally forgot: We probably should notify all @Translators!

HongDa · August 3, 2026, 6:29am

We have prepared a notification flag that will be placed on the old bilara when the date is set, so that users can be prepared.

HongDa · August 3, 2026, 8:02am

@sabbamitta I added the HTML item to the related menu.

sabbamitta · August 3, 2026, 8:26am

I can’t see it there:

I am on a “site” page that does have html in some segments (methodology).

HongDa · August 3, 2026, 8:57am

I remember that the site content did not have corresponding HTML content, but the suttas did have corresponding HTML content?

sabbamitta · August 3, 2026, 9:11am

It’s the other way around, acutally. For example tables of content at the top of pages like this:

I believe in suttas like DN1 or other long suttas which have subheaders and tables of content at the beginning, the html is found in the separate html folder. It’s not in Bilara.

HongDa · August 3, 2026, 9:20am

hmm, yes, there is a slight difference. For example, in site files, the content and HTML tags are in the same file, while in suttas, the content and HTML are in different files.

My update mainly addresses the second case.

github.com/suttacentral/bilara-data

translation/de/site/methodology_translation-de-site.json

published

{
  "methodology:1": "Methodik und Quellen ",
  "methodology:2": "<a href='#item1'>Hintergrund</a> ",
  "methodology:3": "<a href='#item2'>Suttaparallelen</a> ",
  "methodology:4": "<a href='#item3'>Vinayaparallelen</a> ",
  "methodology:5": "<a href='#item4'>Textquellen</a> ",
  "methodology:6": "<a href='#item5'>Mark-up</a> ",
  "methodology:7": "<a href='#item6'>Bibliografie</a> ",
  "methodology:8": "Hintergrund ",
  "methodology:9": "Seit dem 19. Jahrhundert haben Wissenschaftler erkannt, dass viele buddhistische Texte, die man im Palikanon findet, Gegenstücke oder Parallelen in den chinesischen und anderen Sammlungen haben. Die erste Dokumentation dieser Parallelen wurde von Nanjio Bunyiu (Nanjō Bun’yū, 南條文雄) in seinem Werk <cite>A Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka</cite> von 1883 publiziert. Nanjio führte 24 Dīghanikāya-Lehrreden als Parallelen zum chinesischen Dīrghāgama auf. Diese keimhaften Tabellen stellen einen wichtigen ersten Schritt dar, zeigen sie doch, dass der Vergleich der chinesischen <i lang='pi' translate='no'>Āgamas</i> mit den Pali-<i lang='pi' translate='no'>Nikāyas</i> ein fruchtbares Unterfangen sein kann. Ein Jahr später beschrieb Samuel Beal Ähnlichkeiten zwischen verschiedenen buddhistischen Texten auf Pali und Chinesisch und bemerkte: ",
  "methodology:10": "„Es ist offensichtlich, sowohl von ihren Übereinstimmungen als auch von den feinen Unterschieden her, die durchgängig vorkommen, dass diese Lehrreden von einer gemeinsamen Quelle herstammen; nicht dem Original, aber von Versionen, die vom Original stammen. Von einer dieser Versionen wurde die chinesische Übersetzung angefertigt.“ (<cite>„Buddhism in China“</cite>, S. 25.) ",
  "methodology:11": "1908 veröffentlichte Masaharu Anesaki <cite>The Four Buddhist Āgamas in Chinese: A Concordance of their Parts and the Corresponding Counterparts in the Pāli Nikāyas</cite>, dem 1929 Chizen Akanumas <cite>The Comparative Catalogue of Chinese Āgamas & Pāli Nikāyas</cite> folgte. Letzteres wurde zum Standard-Referenzwerk des Fachgebiets und wurde in den folgenden Jahrzehnten von einer Reihe meist japanischer und taiwanesischer Wissenschaftler korrigiert und verbessert. In den 1990er Jahren unternahm es Rod Bucknell, die neuesten Versionen dieser Parallelentabellen zu digitalisieren. Zusätzlich arbeitete er mit dem Ehrwürdigen Anālayo daran, den Anwendungsbereich weiter zu verbessern und zu erweitern. Diese Tabellen wurden zur Grundlage für die Parallelen zu den vier Haupt-<i lang='pi' translate='no'>Nikāyas</i> / -<i lang='pi' translate='no'>Āgamas</i> auf SuttaCentral. ",
  "methodology:12": "2014 erstellte Bhikkhu Sujato einen Parallelensatz für den Vinaya, der zu SuttaCentral hinzugefügt wurde, und 2016 fügte Ayya Vimala Versparallelen zu den Dhammapadas hinzu. ",
  "methodology:13": "Die Daten zu den Parallelen werden in einer einzigen Datei verwaltet, <a href='https://github.com/suttacentral/sc-data/blob/master/relationship/parallels.json'>parallels.json</a>, die sich im <a href='https://github.com/suttacentral' title='SuttaCentral auf Github'>Github-Datendepot von SuttaCentral</a> befindet. ",
  "methodology:14": "Neben den Parallelen beherbergt SuttaCentral Originaltexte und Übersetzungen, sofern verfügbar. Eine kurze Notiz zu den Quellen dieser Texte findet sich weiter unten. ",
  "methodology:15": "Suttaparallelen ",
  "methodology:16": "Rod Bucknell, aktualisiert von Sujato ",
  "methodology:17": "Arten von Parallelen ",
  "methodology:18": "Indem man der einfachen Klassifikation folgte, wie sie in Akanuma (1929) eingeführt worden war, waren in den Daten auf SuttaCentral ursprünglich zwei Arten von Parallelen anerkannt: ",
  "methodology:19": "<b>Vollständige Parallele:</b> Vollständige Parallelen unterscheiden sich im Inhalt zu einem gewissen Grad, aber sie sind so ähnlich, dass sie mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit von einem gemeinsamen Vorläufer abstammen. ",

This file has been truncated. show original

sabbamitta · August 3, 2026, 9:22am

Oh! My question was actually referring to the first case, namely site files with html in the same file.

For me it is good to see the html code, but my memory has it that for other translators it is better to see just the final links. Which was the reason why this tick box “show html” has been implemented to the site files.

I am referring to this post of mine.

HongDa · August 3, 2026, 9:34am

Got it, let me see how to handle this problem.

WayChuang · August 3, 2026, 10:58am

Do we need to have our changes merged into mainline before the transition to the new cat?

sujato · August 5, 2026, 12:07am

Yes, ideally. The main thing to remember is that once we switch we can’t work on the old one. Nonetheless, the back end remains the same, so we can merge directly in Github.

Having said which, it’s taking a bit longer than I thought for the publications files, so we won’t be launching v2 this week.

WayChuang · August 6, 2026, 9:27am

I think this issue is still there. It makes it slow to navigate a long list if I need to use mouse to scroll. I’m talking about this scrollbar.

The bilara navigation banner at the top is non-sticky, so when I scroll down to the bottom of a long list, then I have to scroll all the way up to access bilara navigation banner.

Of course, one can still use browser’s back button to navigate back to previous menu. But that kind of defeat the purpose of having bilara navigation banner.

sabbamitta · August 6, 2026, 9:47am

I have some memory that I have seen a vertical scroll bar in the new Bilara, ~~but right now I don’t see any at all!~~

It’s actually there. But you only get to see it if you hover your mouse over it. For very long suttas it’s not easy to find the scroll bar, i. e. where to hover, for it can be very short and you don’t know where exactly to search for it.

My OS has an accessibility option “always show scrollbar”, and although I have ticked this, it doesn’t work in the new Bilara. (I personally don’t like things being so subtle that you have to guess where they are, but there seem to be other folks who like it subtle … )

I totally second this. It would be desirable to have it sticky.