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pranayama
9th February 2008, 03:55 AM
I am working on a very extensive "Japanese woodworking glossary", so if you know Japanese words/names, whatever regarding Japanese woodwork and carpentry please mail them to me. At this time it only contains 1200 words, because this project runs over many years it will only grow. If you help me out in any way, then the credits for your effort will, of course, be sigend to you!
At this time I have no intesion on publishing this work on the forum because it is to incomplete and needs editing. When I am more satisfied of the work, i'll be happy to share it.
If I can help you out with explaining words I'll do my best to answer your quetions.
:!

Sheets
9th February 2008, 04:52 AM
Hello, Pranayama.
Great idea, but you might consider publishing what you already have, even if just the term (as the explanations need to be edited, as you say) because you could be bombarded with stuff you already have from many sources and you'd spend all your time trying to vet what's a repeat from what's new. This way, people can see what you have and then only send in what seems to be missing. Something to consider, anyway.
In any case, you should also ask people to name their source if possible, so you don't end up with a lot of unverified and possibly erroneous terms. Not that anyone would intentionally provide anything bogus, but many of us non-Japanese often misunderstand, mispronounce, misspell, misetc. No need to add all the sources to the final product, but just a kind of quality control.
And to make it a really great and most useful resource, a picture of the item, when appropriate, would also be invaluable (a picture is worth a thousand words). I know this would increase the data size considerably, so may be too ambitious.
Anyway, best of luck.
Steve

pranayama
9th February 2008, 05:16 AM
Hey Sheets,
Thank you for your intresting and good comments.
"as the explanations need to be edited":
It is not the explanations that needs editing but the layout. At the moment i work in an excell file (I'm still looking for a profesional solution).
And yes I defenitly need the source (if possible) because I mention it with every word.
A picture can be helpfull. I was planning on adding my own pictures in the future but others are welcome.
At the moment I work like this:
Japanese word--English transalation--Englisch discreption--Dutch transalation--Dutch description--reference to an illustration (in literature)--reference to literature--source
I transalate also to dutch because it's my native laguage.
I am defenitly considering publishing it (propably a part), but because of the size and nature of the document i'm wondering how?
Suggestions are most welcome.

Sheets
9th February 2008, 06:19 AM
I can see the problem in trying to get the info out of excel. Can excel save to a table in html? That way, you could link to pages where the info is stored on-line somewhere. I don't know if that's easy or not.

Steve

billbeee
9th February 2008, 07:07 AM
Hi pranayama.
I am about to do the same thing myself, that is try to incorporate an illustrated glossary into my website.
I am currently looking at a program called Moodle, which is primarily an education program used by universities and colleges etc. It has a glossary module that can simplify the linking and editing process.

Check it out, you may find it interesting. It is run under the same sort of free software license that these forums are run under.

In the moodle forum on glossries, there has recently been a thread about tranfering data from Exell.

Cheers
Bill.

pranayama
9th February 2008, 09:33 PM
Hey Billbee,
Moodle does look interesting, I'll try to make time soon to check it out.
It looks like it could be a possibility. I realy need to look for the best program/solution. This project is only in it's start-up fase, I have some more ideas that I have to consider to in the choice of software.
Thanks for the suggestion.

Mathieu

pranayama
10th February 2008, 04:29 AM
Wow, look what I found, http://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/ .
I defenitly have to compare my work to theirs and decide if it's worth continuing my project.
They have done a beautifull job.