Digitization of the Concise Sociopolitical and Mass-Media Dictionary (English — Amharic)

Abstract

The Concise Sociopolitical and Mass-Media Dictionary is an English-to-Amharic dictionary that was prepared primarily by Professor Zdeněk Poláček and digitized at the Hiob Ludolf Center for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies (HLCEES) under the supervision of Professor Alessandro Bausi. The edition and digitization were carried out initially on Microsoft Word and then through XML using similar technology to other production work at the HLCEES. By using a lightly modified TEI Publisher application within eXist-db, this project successfully produced a 1,600-page PDF that may also be published as a book. This project note highlights the key steps taken in the process of digitizing the dictionary. It gives a succinct exploration of how TEI Publisher simplified the digitization process in comparison to Word. It also presents some of the extra revision steps that had to be taken using eXide after a dictionary entry was entered into the application. We supplement this note with figures to demonstrate these points.

Keywords

• dictionary
• edition
• XML tool
• eXist-db
• Ethiopia
• Ethiopian studies