Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names

The Landscapes of Injustice project seeks to encode mid-twentieth-century documents by and about the Japanese-Canadian community so they are accessible to modern audiences. The fundamental problem is that some of the kanji used at that time have been replaced since then by different kanji, and other...

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Main Author: Stewart Arneil
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: Text Encoding Initiative Consortium 2019-08-01
Series:Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/jtei/2301
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author Stewart Arneil
author_facet Stewart Arneil
author_sort Stewart Arneil
collection DOAJ
description The Landscapes of Injustice project seeks to encode mid-twentieth-century documents by and about the Japanese-Canadian community so they are accessible to modern audiences. The fundamental problem is that some of the kanji used at that time have been replaced since then by different kanji, and others have been removed from lists of formally acceptable characters. This report documents our efforts with two technologies designed to address this situation. The first is the Standardized Variation Sequence (SVS) feature of Unicode. Our work revealed that this set of variation sequences does not completely cover the old and new glyph pairs identified by the Japanese authorities, and that the pairs formally identified by the Japanese authorities do not completely cover all the new glyph forms in general use. We turned to TEI’s , , and elements as a second technology to augment the support provided by Unicode. Lastly, we dealt with the issue of finding suitably qualified people to do the markup. The result is markup which retains the original glyphs and relates them to the modern glyphs, so that in our output products we will be able to support search and display using either form of the glyph.
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institution Kabale University
issn 2162-5603
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spelling doaj-art-90a5e91cbdcf49c89141131779a7fae42025-01-30T13:56:33ZdeuText Encoding Initiative ConsortiumJournal of the Text Encoding Initiative2162-56032019-08-011210.4000/jtei.2301Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian NamesStewart ArneilThe Landscapes of Injustice project seeks to encode mid-twentieth-century documents by and about the Japanese-Canadian community so they are accessible to modern audiences. The fundamental problem is that some of the kanji used at that time have been replaced since then by different kanji, and others have been removed from lists of formally acceptable characters. This report documents our efforts with two technologies designed to address this situation. The first is the Standardized Variation Sequence (SVS) feature of Unicode. Our work revealed that this set of variation sequences does not completely cover the old and new glyph pairs identified by the Japanese authorities, and that the pairs formally identified by the Japanese authorities do not completely cover all the new glyph forms in general use. We turned to TEI’s , , and elements as a second technology to augment the support provided by Unicode. Lastly, we dealt with the issue of finding suitably qualified people to do the markup. The result is markup which retains the original glyphs and relates them to the modern glyphs, so that in our output products we will be able to support search and display using either form of the glyph.https://journals.openedition.org/jtei/2301glyphkanjiunicodevariantJapanese
spellingShingle Stewart Arneil
Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names
Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative
glyph
kanji
unicode
variant
Japanese
title Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names
title_full Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names
title_fullStr Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names
title_full_unstemmed Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names
title_short Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names
title_sort encoding disappearing characters the case of twentieth century japanese canadian names
topic glyph
kanji
unicode
variant
Japanese
url https://journals.openedition.org/jtei/2301
work_keys_str_mv AT stewartarneil encodingdisappearingcharactersthecaseoftwentiethcenturyjapanesecanadiannames