Zack Hubert mentions that I’m thinking about using the NET Bible for a collaborative parallel glossing project.

Here is how it might work:

The user is presented with the Greek text and the NET text.

Consider Luke 1.1. The Greek reads:

Ἐπειδήπερ πολλοὶ ἐπεχείρησαν ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν περὶ τῶν πεπληροφορημένων ἐν ἡμῖν πραγμάτων,

The NET reads

Now many have undertaken to compile an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,

It should be possible to select any number of words in the Greek and any number of words from the NET and assert that they correspond (or link) to one another. There is no need to link between the entire verse of Greek and the entire verse of the NET because that link has already been made automatically.

Say the user selects Ἐπειδήπερ. They should then be shown the part-of-speech and parse information for the word (in this case C) as well as the lexical form, ἐπειδήπερ. The user should also be shown all previous glosses for ἐπειδήπερ in other contexts.

The user is then instructed to select the word or words that directly translate ἐπειδήπερ. In this case, the user selects Now and submits.

The user need not progress in order. Say the next thing they select is the word πραγμάτων. As before, they are shown the part-of-speech and parse information (N-GPN) and the lexical form, πρᾶγμα. Again the user is show previous glosses. These glosses should include those specifically for πραγμάτων as well as other forms of πρᾶγμα, perhaps displayed differently.

The user then selects things and submits.

It should be possible to select multiple Greek words and link them to just one word from NET. It should also be possible to select one Greek word and link it to multiple words in the NET. Many-to-many links should also be possible. For example, a user could select περὶ τῶν πεπληροφορημένων ἐν ἡμῖν πραγμάτων and of the things that have been fulfilled among us and submit that linkage.

It is also possible that some words won’t link to anything.

Many-to-many linkages should be encouraged where the particular sense of a word is entirely determined by its use in a sequence (such as an idiom).

Users should be discouraged from doing many-to-many linkages where the sequence isn’t a grammatical unit such as a phrase. For example, a user shouldn’t submit a link between περὶ τῶν and of the. This clearly can’t be enforced.

Users should be required to log in before they can submit linkages. Each linkage will be stored with the email address of the person that made the linkage.

While users may be encouraged to work on particular verses, they should be free to go to whatever verses interest them. Duplicate effort is not a problem and provides redundancy. The data can be checked later for inconsistencies.

originally published on jtauber.com