Transcribing the 1917 JPS
From OpenSiddurProject
Introduction
In 1917, the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) released a full translation of the Hebrew Bible into English. It effectively became the standard Jewish translation for most of the 20th century.
The 1917 JPS is generally an accurate translation, but is considered archaic by contemporary translation standards. We believe that it can form a solid platform for derived translations. As such, it can be the basis of one or more new, freely redistributable Hebrew Bible translations.
Collaboration with the Internet Sacred Texts Archive
The Open Siddur Project is collaborating with the Internet Sacred Text Archive to bring a complete and accurate transcription of the first edition of the 1917 JPS online. Much of the Bible has already been transcribed. To start, we will be transcribing the books of Nehemiah and Psalms.
John B. Hare, of sacred-texts.com has graciously provided us with full page images of the 1917 JPS, and with a first-pass transcription produced by computer using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Our jobs are:
- to correct the OCR transcription so it is identical to the page text
- to follow a few simple transcription conventions that will make it easier to convert the text to web-viewable format.
The Open Siddur Project is also grateful to the Internet Sacred Texts Archive for providing us with the digitized text of the Westminster Leningrad Codex.
Other Digitized Editions
Important Note: There is one other extant online version of the 1917 JPS. However, its transcriber claims that he has made sufficient changes to the text to warrant a new copyright. The copyright license under which it is offered is not compatible with a free culture project like ours.
Please do not copy or "correct" our transcription from other online transcriptions! Our transcription must be a true and accurate transcription made directly from the edition whose pages we are transcribing. Our resulting text will be licensed with the Creative Commons CC0 license, placing the text where it belongs -- back in the public domain.
Starting Up
Logging in
Log in or create an account now, then return to this page. You will not be credited for your transcription or be able to reserve a page in the middle of transcribing it, if are not logged in.
Selecting a page for transcription
To select a page to begin a new transcription, go to the Transcription page (linked in the navigation sidebar on the left). In the box labeled "Workflow status", click on "Ready for Transcription." This will bring you to a list of pages that are have not yet been assigned for transcription and are available for you to take on. Pages with the word "English" in the their titles involve English language transcription. You may choose to transcribe any of those pages from that list. To adopt a page you can either click "Assign me" in the "Transcription toolbox" or you can click the "Start transcription now" link in the pink box and save the page after beginning your transcription work.
Take Advantage of Your User Page
It certainly helps to take a look at you user page. This is an area where you can let other transcribers know your background and what pages you've been working on. It's also a good idea to keep a record hereof what pages you're transcribing for when you want to revisit an uncompleted page and don't remember the page number. Your user page can be accessed on the top row of this wiki -- just click on your username there and you'll see it.
Working with the Transcription Interface
All of the transcription work is done inside the transcription interface. To see an example of what sort of work you'll be transcribing, here's an image of a page from the 1917 JPS. (Please open it in a new tab or window.)
When you first select a page to transcribe, you'll see an information page indicating the document's status, as shown in the image below:
The "Transcription Toolbox" links back to this tutorial and provides helpful reminders of important keys.
Note that, on this page, the text may appear right-justified and punctuation marks may be placed incorrectly. This is a technical artifact and is of no importance to the final text.
Just under the toolbox is a "Start Transcribing Now" link inside a pink highlighted line. Click this link and if you are logged in, the page is assigned to you. This assures that nobody else will edit the page while you are working on it. (Instructions on adjusting the page status after you've begun working on it are described later on.)
When you first see the editing page, it has a page viewer on top and an edit box just below it, as shown here:
Note that you don't have to be online to transcribe text for the Open Siddur Project. To transcribe offline, first right click on the image and select save it to your computer. At your convenience, open up the image in your favorite image viewer and begin your transcription in your favorite application for typing in Hebrew. Later on, you can copy/paste your transcription from this application to the textbox in the transcription interface and click "submit" to submit your work.
Moving and Zooming Images
Near the top of the page to be transcribed, you will see an image taking up most of the width of your screen. This is the page image which is to be transcribed. Initially, it will probably appear too small to be readable, and the whole image will not be shown on screen.
To pan the image (move it within the viewport), move the mouse over the image, hold the left mouse button down, and move the mouse around (drag the mouse). It will pan in the direction of the mouse movement.
To zoom the image, hold both the shift and left mouse buttons down and drag upwards. To zoom out, hold the shift and left mouse buttons down and drag downwards. A zoomed image may also be panned by dragging it.
While you're typing, you may find it helpful to move and zoom the viewport.
Returning to a Saved Transcription
If you want to pause the transcription and continue later, click Save page. It will remain assigned to you (in "Transcribe-assigned" status) until its status is changed. You might find it very helpful to make a note of the page number you were transcribing in your user page.
To return to a saved transcription, go to the Transcription page and, in the box labeled "Workflow status", click on "Assigned to a transcriber." This will bring you to an index of pages whose transcription has already been assigned, and the page you worked on previously should be listed here. Select your page and when you get to the page, click on "Continue transcribing now" in the pink box.
Completing Work on a Page (or handing it off to someone else)
When you will no longer be transcribing the page, you must change the page status to reflect that it is now either ready to be proofread or that the transcription should be completed by someone else. Near the "Save page" button at the bottom of the transcription page is a Page status box, as shown in the image on the right.
To indicate that transcription is finished and to pass the page on to proofreading, click the Proofread-open radio button, then click Save page.
To indicate that you would like to stop transcribing the page and that someone else should continue where you left off, click the Transcribe-open radio button, then click Save page.
Transcription Rules
All of the English transcriptions begin with text that was automatically recognized from the image by optical character recognition (OCR). The primary job of a transcriber of English text is to correct the OCR-ed text to conform to the text in the original page scan and to follow some simple conventions.
First and foremost, we must make sure that the text corresponds exactly to the onscreen text. Use all tools you can: including your eyes and spell checkers.
A completed example of the transcription of JPS, p.1049 is shown at Page:1917JPS-TranscriptionCompletedExample-English.jpg.
Header
Do not transcribe the header line on top of the page.
Book Titles
New book names should be separated from the text by two lines. The Hebrew should be enclosed in an `{he}` tag and the title separated on its own line. The remainder of the text should be separated by another two lines. The following shows the title of the book of Nehemiah (on Page:38neh_0001-English.jpg):
them had wives by whom they had children.
{he נחמיה}
NEHEMIAH
/1:1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah
Page numbers
At the beginning of each page, include the code {p. N}, where N is the page number on the scan, on its own line (followed by an enter press). For example:
{p. 1049}
The page number is the number from the original book. In the 1917 JPS, it is usually at the bottom of the page. It is not the scan sequence number, which is the number in the page title on the wiki.
Verse numbers
At the beginning of each verse, include the chapter and verse number preceded by a slash '/'. See for example, the first 2 verses of the Book of Ruth:
/1:1 AND it came to pass in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Beth-lehem in Judah went to sojourn in the field of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons. /1:2 And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Beth-lehem in Judah. And they came into the field of Moab, and continued there.
"/1:2" means "Chapter 1, verse 2."
The /chapter:verse number should be followed by a single space.
Note: For odd numbered pages, the bold number at the top right of the header is the chapter and verse of the last verse contained on the page. For even numbered pages, the bold number at the top left of the header is the chapter and verse of the first verse contained on the page. (These numbers are useful for figuring out the chapter and verse where your transcription begins, but they should not be transcribed.)
Chapter numbers
It is not necessary to copy the large number indicating a new chapter division. Simply begin a new paragraph (press enter twice) and start the verse numbering for the new chapter.
Formatting Paragraphs
At the end of each typographic paragraph, insert a blank line (the equivalent of pressing enter twice).
Line breaks
It is not necessary to preserve the original text's line breaks, unless the original text's line breaks have semantic meaning, such as the ends of poetic lines.
In prose texts, removal of line breaks is not required, with the exception of the removal of the break in hyphenated words (see the next rule, below). In poetic texts, where line breaks are significant (the entire book of Psalms, for example), both retention of significant line breaks and removal of insignificant line breaks are required.
Broken words and hyphenation
It is not necessary to preserve broken words and hyphenation. The lines may be joined together and the hyphen removed.
Small capitals
When the original text is formatted in small caps (the word "Lord" in the 1917 JPS), do not indicate the formatting. Just transcribe it in CAPITAL LETTERS, as in "LORD."
Italics
Italicized text is formatted as follows:
<I>Italicized text</I>
Hebrew Words
Incidental Hebrew text is included inside `{hb HEBREW TEXT }`. These will usually be book titles (see above).
Note that if Hebrew and English appear on the same line, the text box may display the characters in the wrong order instead of in the way you typed them. This does not effect the quality of the transcription. It is a quirk of the way mixed right-to-left and left-to-right texts are displayed by default. Because of it, it may be helpful to transcribe incidental Hebrew after completing the English transcription. Leaving a marker in the text that can be searched for (with ctrl-f or cmd-f), such as {he ***}, can be used as a way to find where the missing Hebrew should be filled in.
Quotations
The first verse on the page should be transcribed as follows:
people, said unto all the people: `This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep.'
Note the use of the backtick (`) as an open quote mark, and the apostrope (') as a close quote mark.
Footnote references
When you see a reference to a footnote in the text, include a footnote reference using the `{fr. N}` tag, where N is number or symbol used in the text.
A line with a footnote reference is written as in this example:
days of {fr. a} Joshua the son of Nun unto
Footnotes
Place footnotes where they appear at the bottom of the page. Include the footnote in a `{fn. N text}` tag. N is the same as the symbol used in the footnote reference. In the example page, the footnote is entered as follows:
{fn. a. Heb. <I>Jeshua.</I>}
Note the use of the I tag for italics.
Em-dashes
Long dashes (—) should be converted into two hyphens (--).
What to do with Misprints and Typos
If you see a typographical error or misprint in the original text, mark it with `{sic "Incorrect text" "Correct text"}`. Do not correct or regularize spelling (e.g., do not change American spelling to British spelling or vice versa) using sic. It should only be used to mark errors that were most likely not deliberate on the part of the original editor. For example, if the original text says:
The rain continued alll day.
then, you should mark it:
The rain continued {sic "alll" "all"} day.
Note that only misprints and typographical errors should be indicated as sic. Transcription is not the stage to impose corrections on the text from outside sources.
Proofread Your Work
Although your work will be reviewed in a proofreading stage, you can help greatly by proofreading your work before submitting it. Proofread your own text and correct any errors you see.
Help Improve this Tutorial
If you don't understand how to do something or it took you a long time to figure out how to do it, it's probably insufficiently (or incorrectly) documented. If you know how to correct it, edit and correct the documentation. If you're not sure, ask the mailing list or file a bug report.
