AncientScripts Parallel Corpus v1.0.0: SOURCES.md

SOURCES.md

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+# AncientScripts Parallel Corpus — Source Verdicts
+
+Research date: 2026-10-19. Standard: ONLY public-domain or explicitly academic-open
+sources. No scraping of copyrighted modern translations. Every verdict below cites
+the source's own terms.
+
+## 1. Sumerian (cuneiform) — CAUTION / GO via ORACC
+
+**ETCSL (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford): NO-GO without permission.**
+Terms (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/usingbrowse.php): "There is no restriction
+on printing the compositions one-by-one for personal and educational use. However,
+permission must be obtained before including the compositions in a book, compendium,
+or similar for distribution or sale." A training dataset released on the Hub is a
+compendium for distribution → permission required. Do not ingest ETCSL translations.
+
+**ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus): GO.**
+License (https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/about/licensing/index.html): "released
+under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license… you are free to copy,
+distribute, transmit and adapt our work without permission" (attribute + share-alike).
+Bulk access: JSON API per project — `http://oracc.org/[PROJECT]/manifest.json`,
+`corpus.json`, `corpusjson/[ID].json` (documented at oracc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/doc/opendata/json).
+Formats include `atf` (transliteration), `lem` (lemmatized), and `tr-en` (English
+translation). 146 public projects. Yield: tens of thousands of texts with translations
+(varies by project; e.g. royal-inscription projects are translation-rich).
+Caveat: oracc.org and oracc.museum.upenn.edu were unreachable from our sandbox on
+2026-10-19 (connection drops); the Munich mirror serves the project list but not all
+per-project JSON. Retry from another network or use per-project Zenodo dumps
+(e.g. BALT: 2,990 Babylonian texts, zenodo.org/records/17792290).
+Unicode: corpora store ATF transliteration (sign names like ŠUKU, BAN₂), NOT Unicode
+cuneiform. True Unicode cuneiform (U+12000 block, well supported in fonts) requires a
+sign-list mapping step — flagged as v2 work.
+
+**CDLI: GO (with limits).** "Fully committed to open access… data… for download in many
+formats, and through the API… reused by researchers, but also for commercial endeavours"
+(cdli.earth). 300k+ artifacts. LIMIT: mostly transliteration + metadata; English
+translations are sparse. Best as a transliteration/metadata source, not for triples.
+
+## 2. Akkadian (cuneiform) — GO via ORACC
+
+Same verdict as Sumerian: ORACC is the primary source (CC BY-SA, JSON API, tr-en
+formats). Akkadian royal inscriptions (RINAP etc.) and the BALT Zenodo dump are
+translation-rich. CDLI as supplement. Same Unicode-cuneiform mapping caveat as above.
+
+## 3. Egyptian hieroglyphs — CAUTION (needs more research)
+
+**Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy): CAUTION.**
+Requires free registration; the interface is search-based with no documented bulk
+API; and translations are in GERMAN, not English ("Texts are presented in
+transliteration and in German translation"). The TLA *lemma list* is CC BY-SA 4.0
+(per hieroglyphica.org legal page), but full-text bulk extraction is not clearly
+permitted or technically available. Not suitable as-is for an English-parallel corpus.
+Unicode hieroglyphs (U+13000–U+1342F) have good font support — the blocker is licensing
+and access, not encoding.
+Alternative to investigate: the St. Andrews Corpus (transliteration + English
+translation + some hieroglyphic text) — license not yet verified. Pyramid Texts
+(Sethe, Univ. of Chicago) — likely public domain given age, not yet verified.
+
+## 4. Sanskrit (Devanagari) — GO
+
+**Sacred Books of the East (1879–1910, ed. Max Müller): GO.** Unambiguously public
+domain by age. LIMIT: English translations only — no Devanagari source text.
+**Wikisource (sa.wikisource.org): GO** with CC BY-SA 4.0 attribution on transcriptions
+(the underlying texts are PD). Verified live 2026-10-19: the Bhagavad Gita in
+Devanagari across 18 chapter subpages, verses numbered ॥१-N॥ in `<poem>` blocks.
+Unicode Devanagari: excellent support.
+Caveat found in pilot research: Edwin Arnold's "Song Celestial" (Gutenberg #2388, PD)
+has NO chapter divisions after CHAPTER I — it is one continuous poem, so it cannot
+cleanly align to verse- or chapter-numbered Devanagari. For verse-level Gita triples,
+a verse-numbered PD translation is still needed (Besant/Das 1905 or Telang SBE Vol. 8
+— not yet pulled). IAST transliteration of Devanagari is deterministic and safe to
+generate.
+
+## 5. Classical Chinese — GO via Wikisource; ctext.org is NO-GO
+
+**ctext.org (Chinese Text Project): NO-GO for bulk.** Terms on every page:
+"Please note that the use of automatic download software on this site is strictly
+prohibited, and that users of such software are automatically banned without warning
+to save bandwidth." Explicit anti-scraping + site-content copyright claim. Do not use.
+**Wikisource (zh.wikisource.org): GO** (CC BY-SA transcription of PD text). Verified
+2026-10-19: 道德經 (王弼本), all 81 chapters cleanly marked, Wang Bi commentary in
+`{{*|…}}` templates (strippable). Unicode Traditional Chinese: excellent.
+Pilot pairing: Legge 1891 translation (Project Gutenberg #216, PD — "You may copy it,
+give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License").
+Chapter-level 1:1 alignment verified across all 81 chapters.
+
+## 6. Ancient Greek — GO (script); translations need per-text check
+
+**Open Greek and Latin: GO.** "Perseus has published 41 million words of Greek and 17
+million words of Latin in curated TEI XML… available under a Creative Commons
+(CC-BY-SA) license. These texts were developed specifically so that third parties
+could download, modify and reuse them." GitHub: PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit,
+OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek (+ Zenodo DOIs). Bulk: git clone. Unicode polytonic
+Greek: excellent.
+Translations: the Scaife Viewer carries some translations; Perseus's 2006 CC release
+covered Greek, Latin AND English collections — but per-text license must be checked
+(the Hopper FAQ notes publisher agreements restrict some works). Do not bulk-ingest
+Perseus translations without verifying each text's license flag.
+
+## 7. Latin — GO (proven end-to-end in pilot)
+
+**Open Greek and Latin: GO**, same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms as Greek (17M words of Latin).
+**PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit** on GitHub contains parallel editions: e.g.
+`data/phi0448/phi001/` (Caesar) ships BOTH `phi0448.phi001.perseus-lat2.xml` (Holmes
+Latin edition) AND `phi0448.phi001.perseus-eng2.xml` (McDevitte & Bohn 1869 English
+translation, PD by age) in matching CTS book/chapter structure — 404 aligned chapters
+across 8 books, verified in the pilot. Unicode Latin: excellent (no transliteration
+needed for alphabetic scripts; schema uses null).
+
+---
+
+## Pilot results (pilot.jsonl)
+
+- **485 rows, 0 duplicates** (SHA-256 of script+translation), ids `ancient_pilot_000001…485`
+- Chinese (Traditional): 81 — Tao Te Ching, Wang Bi recension + Legge 1891, chapter-aligned
+- Latin: 404 — Caesar De bello Gallico 8 books, Holmes Latin + McDevitte/Bohn English, CTS chapter-aligned
+- Spot checks: TTC ch.1 (道可道…) + pinyin + Legge all correct; Gallic War 1.1
+  ("Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres…") correctly paired.
+
+## Schema notes / problems hit
+
+1. `transliteration` is `null` for Latin (alphabetic script needs none). Schema permits null; documented per row.
+2. Chinese `transliteration` is machine pinyin (pypinyin, Mandarin-based, tone numbers).
+   It is NOT scholarly Classical Chinese romanization — flagged in `license`/`notes`.
+   A proper literary-Chinese romanization pass is v2 work.
+3. Legge's paragraph numbers ("1.", "2."…) are preserved inside `translation` (faithful
+   to source; documented).
+4. Sanskrit IAST was NOT included in the pilot (Gita dropped: Arnold unalignable).
+   IAST generation from Devanagari is deterministic — ready when a verse-numbered PD
+   translation is sourced.
+5. Cuneiform rows are deferred to v2: ORACC access was flaky from the sandbox and true
+   Unicode cuneiform needs an ATF→Unicode sign-mapping step. ORACC (CC BY-SA) remains
+   the designated source.
+6. Egyptian rows deferred: TLA unsuitable (German translations, no bulk API). Next step:
+   verify St. Andrews Corpus license.
+
+## Recommended build order for the full 25k
+
+1. Latin (OGL): thousands of chapters available now, proven pipeline.
+2. Greek (OGL): same pipeline; verify translation licenses per text.
+3. Classical Chinese (Wikisource + Gutenberg PD translations): chapter-aligned works
+   (Tao Te Ching, Analects, Mencius, etc.).
+4. Sanskrit (Wikisource Devanagari + verse-numbered PD translation — source TBD).
+5. Cuneiform via ORACC (needs reliable network path + ATF→Unicode mapping).
+6. Egyptian (pending source with English translations + bulk access).