text to the databases given that different translations may render the
same name differently, and the impact that has on database creation.
Here's an example: 1 Sam 1:1 starts (in NRSV)
"There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country
of Ephraim, ..."
We want to be able to link from Ramathaim to the article on Ramah (it's
another name for the same place).
Unfortunately, other translations render this name differently.
* KJV, RSV, ESV (and several others) have Ramathaim-zophim.
* NIV follows NRSV (both have Ramathaim-zophim in footnote).
* CEV, GNB, NLT have Ramah.
* NAB (New American Bible) has Rama-thaim
* NET Bible has Ramathaim Zophim (no hyphen)
* Young's Literal Translation has Ramathaim-Zophim (with capital)
This is a slightly pathological example since there's both a LXX/MT
disagreement here, and a linguistic problem as to whether "Zophim" is
part of the name or not. NRSV is following LXX, KJV etc MT. However it
illustrates the kind of problem we face. Perhaps we'd also want to make
the same link from the Hebrew and Greek LXX texts.
My understanding is that we're intending to make these links by a text
search, which in this case would mean that we have to (manually)
cross-reference the various renderings to the Ramah article. If we're
doing that, then I think we need to decide which translations we're
primarily supporting. Checking the 15 or so I have access to is not
going to be practical! Also, we need to specify whether hyphens and
upper/lower case are significant (I would assume not).
Alternative solutions include:
* tagging (semi-automatically but requiring manual input) the Bible
texts in each translation.
* linking from the verse rather than the word. This means we only need
a global 1 Sam 1:1 -> Ramah link, but we lose the ability to click on
the word. This will still need manual input. (There's also cases where
one translation will have a given name in a particular verse and another
won't.)
Thoughts?
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