Au cœur des enjeux scientifiques et techniques du Métadictionnaire. L’informatisation de deux dictionnaires médicaux anciens multilingues et dialphabétiques (Gorris, 1622 et Thevenin, 1658)

Abstract

This study is part of the Collex-Persée Multilingual Medical Metadictionary of the Medica Digital Library project. It is led by BIU Santé Médecine at Université Paris Cité, Sorbonne Université, Institut universitaire de France and université de Lorraine. This paper explores the scientific and technical aspects of digitising two ancient multilingual and dialphabetic medical dictionaries. More specifically, it focuses on the 1622 edition of Jean de Gorris’s Vingt-quatre livres de définitions médicales (Definitionum medicarum libri XXIIII) with headings in Greek and entries in Latin. Additionally, it explores the abridged French version by François Thevenin published in 1658, which serves as the primary source for medical definitions in César-Pierre Richelet’s Dictionnaire françois (1680), the first French monolingual general language dictionary. The choices made at each stage of the process are discussed, from the preprocessing of digitised images to their transcription and the encoding of the files. Critical and open-ended feedback on our experience is provided, along with potential avenues for future improvement.

Keywords

• dictionary
• encoding
• digitisation
• processing chain
• linguistics and language sciences