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Anybody Know More About This? [Talking English-Assyrian Dictionary:]
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Talking English-Assyrian Dictionary:
Progress Report on Assyrian Academic Society's Dictionary Project
TONY KHOSHABA RABI YOAB BENJAMIN
khoshaba@xnet.com yoaben@earthlink.net
Assyrian Academic Society Assyrian Academic Society
Abstract
This paper describes the on-going computational subprojects of the Assyrian Academic Society's (AAS)
dictionary project. The AAS dictionary project was initiated in 1996 to compile English-Assyrian (i.e., Neo-
Aramaic) and Assyrian-English dictionaries. We will demonsrate the steps that were undertaken to produce software
tools for an Assyrian lexicographical project. First we show how we can create visual Windows software
components for Assyrian language which can actively communicate with an existing standard dataabase engine.
Then we describe a Windows application program developed to assist an Assyrian lexicographer to compile an
Assyrian dictionary. Various features of this software and its possible applications are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
The Assyrian Dictionary Project of the Assyrian Academic Society (AAS) was initiated in 1996. The major
motivation for establishing this project was that the existing Assyrian-English dictionaries (Maclean 1901, Oraham
1943) were either outdated or incomplete and that they were not comprehensive from the perspective of giving
usage examples and covering a variety of expressions in modern Assyrian. In addition the project intended to be an
initiative for standardizing the modern Assyrian language which has never been completely standardized neither
with respect to its orthography nor with respect to its morphology and syntax. Since the majority of Assyrians in
Diaspora live in English speaking countries and since the only English-Assyrian dictionary (David 1924) is a highly
incomplete one, the project team saw an urgency to create an initial simple English-Assyrian dictionary. To
accomplish this goal a fund was raised from the members of the AAS and from other community organizations.
Rabi Yoab Benjamin, a senior member of AAS, was assigned as the main lexicographer to work on dictionary
entries for this project.
Working on a project of this scale would need a user friendly database program. The lack of appropriate
software components for Assyrian language motivated us to work on two subprojects:
1. Development of visual software components for the Syriac script that is employed by modern Assyrian.
2. Development of an Assyrian dictionary database program
In the following pages we discuss the above subproject in detail.
ASSYRIAN VISUAL COMPONENTS FOR WINDOWS
The main difficulty of using the existing Windows operating system for writing Assyrian texts with the Syriac
script is the lack of customized Windows software components with built-in features appropriate for processing of
Assyrian texts. The most important standard Windows visual components are Edit and Memo components which are
available in all Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools for Windows. If such components existed for the
Syriac scripts, then the RAD tools could easily be used to develop software for any linguistic project related for
Assyrian language.
To achieve this goal, the visual component for Windows should have the following features:
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1) It should support right-to-left processing of the entered text.
2) It should have a built-in Assyrian rendering engine.
3) It should be data-aware. That is it should be able to connect to the existing database engines.
With the current extensive usage of the Web, it is also desirable that the visual components in mind be Webenabled.
With such web-enabled components, the web-developers can give web pages a more Assyrian look and feel
and can utilize the Syriac script more extensively in web pages. This would definitely enhance the usage of the
language in diaspora communities as well as scholarship.
The Assyrian visual components in Windows 95 environment were designed with the above features in mind.
The Delphi software package was chosen to develop these components since Delphi, which is based on Object
Pascal programming language, provided an easy method to customize existing Windows components.
Figure 1 shows an example of using an Assyrian Edit component on a Windows form. This Assyrian Edit
component is installed as a precompiled visual component on the Delphi's component toolbar and can be dropped on
a form similar to other standard Windows components. Note that the details of the design of this component are
totally hidden from the user of the component. The programmer can use this component in his or her application and
can select various parameters of the component through programming or the provided object inspector interface in
Delphi environment. This Assyrian Edit component has three parameters for making it a fully operational database
visual component. The programmer can enable the data-aware feature of the Assyrian Edit component at design
time. Then a data source and a data field can be assigned to it. The Assyrian Edit component was derived from the
TCustomControl class. TCustomControl is a lower level class in Delphi that can be used for developing customized
Windows controls. Various Windows event handlers of this class and its paint method were modified for processing
of Assyrian texts.
THE ASSYRIAN DICTIONARY DATABASE PROGRAM
The Assyrian dictionary database program was also designed in the Delphi environment. Our goal was to
provide the following features in the software:
1) Provide full control of the database to the user. The user should be able to create a new database and
customize it. The user should also be able to navigate in the database and edit it. Some of these features will only be
enabled for Assyrian linguists to enter and edit lexicographical data. For a general user of a dictionary only the
navigating feature will be enabled.
2) Enable the program to read and render data files from ShoeBox software. The ShoeBox Software is a free
software available through Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and it can be downloaded through SIL's web page.
This program is very useful for linguistics application. It initially did not support the Syriac script and did not have
right-to-left capability. Thanks to the hard work of SIL programmers and Rabi Yoab Benjamin's consultation the
ShoeBox program right now can fully support any linguistic project related to the Assyrian language in its eastern
script. This program is currently being used by our project team for entering data.
3) Provide report generation capability from the database.
4) Provide voice recording and voice playing capability for the dictionary entries. The recording feature will be
disabled for the general users.
Figure 2 shows the main interface to the Assyrian dictionary database program which is currently customized
for a simple English-Assyrian dictionary. The File menu in this program is designated for handling the creation of a
new database, the opening and editing of the existing databases, and the parsing of the ShoeBox program's data files.
The Edit menu allows copying of the Assyrian text to Windows clipboard which then can be pasted in any Windows
compatible text editor. The Tools menu allows the user to create a report from the currently active database of the
dictionary. Figure 3 shows an example of a generated report. Wrap-around Assyrian text should happen from left
side; therefore, the report generation components were slightly modified as well. The Options menu in this program
allows the user to customize the user interface. The Voice menu allows the user to configure, record and play voice
files associated with the selected English or Assyrian words. The Help menu describes various aspects of the
program for the user.
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CONCLUSION
In this paper, we described two subprojects that could help create appropriate software applications for the
Assyrian language using the East Syriac script. The program can be easily used by Estrangela and Serto fonts. A lot
of work still needs to be done in the field of Assyrian comupting in order to provide software developers with
sufficient software components and tools. We have tried to contribute to this field by providing a few customized
visual components and a dictionary database program. The outcome of our project will be available for public use in
the near future. For more information and updates the readers are encouraged to visit the Assyrian Academic
Society's web site at www.aas.net.
REFERENCES
David, Rev. S. (1924). The First English-Chaldean Dictionary.
Maclean, A. J. (1901). Dictionary of the Dialects of Vernacular Syriac. The Claredon Press
Cambridge. (Reprinted in 19971 by Philo Press, Amsterdam.)
Oraham, A. J. (1943). Oraham's Dictionary of the Stabilized and Enriched Assyrian Language and English. Assyrian Press of
America, Chicago.



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