@cosmicore.bsky.social
Researcher | Oriental Studies | Languages, Scripts, & Texts | Philology & History | #Tangut #Khitan #Jurchen
Soon on immarkus.xmarkus.org : select your favorite models from Huggingface, the Github of AI models; or add your own.
Turns out freely available Chinese models like QWEN perform well on early printed Latin texts -better than others.
Get in touch if interested in testing or further collaboration.
Not only a fiercely competent Sinologist (though he would never admit that), but also the best and most loving dad. The grief is as a shoreless sea.
30.07.2025 10:27 — 👍 11 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we, the family of Andrew West, confirm his peaceful passing on 10th July 2025. The BabelStone legacy will be continued by colleagues and friends.
corp.unicode.org/pipermail/un...
Dr West was one of the most remarkable scholars out there. He could read scripts that were extinct for a millennium -- Tangut, Khitan, Sanskrit, Tibetan; derive meaning from even tiny scraps of paper that time had preserved for us.
May Dr. West be reborn in the Pure Land of Amithaba
Me in August 2016 with the enormous Tangut inscription standing at the entrance to the Western Xia tombs near Yinchuan ...
22.10.2024 18:31 — 👍 27 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0I've just heard the terrible news that my friend - and friend of many here - Andrew West, @babelstone.co.uk, the incomparably brilliant Sinologist and Tangutologist passed away suddenly but peacefully on 10th July. 1/2
14.07.2025 17:49 — 👍 86 🔁 36 💬 8 📌 7
Jurchen Small Script páizǐ (travel passes or symbols of authority)
These 6 characters and the Jin Emperor's signature mark are all that remain of the 12th-century Jurchen Small Script!
@babelstone.co.uk and I submitted a proposal for its Unicode encoding – a vital step for covering all four extinct #Khitan and #Jurchen scripts.
www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...
Gold paizi found in Chengde, Hebei in 1972, with a vertical inscription in Jurchen small script characters (two clusters of three characters each) beneath a huaya 花押 symbol. Photograph courtesy of Vladimir Belyaev.
First step towards the encoding of Jurchen *small script* characters, by @cosmicore.bsky.social and myself www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...
25.05.2025 17:05 — 👍 20 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 0
It looks like Google translator was used. At least it agrees with the translation.
25.05.2025 09:02 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0The worst thing is to control how they made the corrections requested by the author and where they randomly added new errors in the process.
24.05.2025 06:04 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
For Japanese Studies folks: I’ve ported the NDL’s kuzushiji OCR to run directly in your web browser.
ndlkotenocr-lite-web.netlify.app
No GPU or installation needed. First-time use may take a few minutes to download the model, but after that, it should transcribe each image in about ten seconds.
BDRC is excited to announce the release of the first publicly available desktop app for Tibetan OCR. This is a beta release and we plan to further refine the OCR models and add additional functionality. For the full story and github download link, visit our news site. www.bdrc.io/blog/2025/03...
14.03.2025 19:26 — 👍 24 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 0Transliterating Japanese like an Assyriologist: 🤨
すべての人間は、生まれながらにして自由であり、かつ、尊厳と権利とについて平等である。
su-be-te-no REN.JIAN-wá, SHENG-ma-re-na-ga-ra-ni ši-te ZI.YOU-de a-ri, ka-tsu, ZUN.YAN-to QUAN.LI-to-ni tsu-i-te PING.DENG-de a-ru.
'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.'
My version (words under titles are revealed in square brackets):
“Книга <...>я Дмитрѣева с[ы]на
а дана по[л]гри[в]ны
<...>хтоъ за нѣнь приме[т]ца
то[т] будеть ума ня<...>”
Something like that in modern Russian:
“Книга ... Дмитриева сына, а дана полгривны, ... кто за неё примется, тот будет ума...”
The title page is very reminiscent of the very rare Ivan Fedorov's Azbuka of 1578. However, there are differences (see facsimile). The book's name is the same (“Начало учения детям, хотящим разумети писание” in modern spelling).
24.11.2024 08:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0![Тангутская и китайская филология. К юбилею М. В. Софронова [Tangut and Chinese Philology. To the Anniversary of M. V. Sofronov]. Moscow: Институт востоковедения РАН [Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences], 2024. ISBN 978-5-907846-10-4.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kfdvyxrulaqgyg2u4vtgpu6x/bafkreiaydffrl4hc6bsaql5rbft2cuhcjmxdr2t4np6ixjk52k3h5o5niy@jpeg)
Тангутская и китайская филология. К юбилею М. В. Софронова [Tangut and Chinese Philology. To the Anniversary of M. V. Sofronov]. Moscow: Институт востоковедения РАН [Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences], 2024. ISBN 978-5-907846-10-4.
Tai, Chung-pui, and Viacheslav Zaytsev. “Tibetan Buddhism practice of the great seal (mahāmudrā) as recorded in Tangut fragments with Tibetan phonetic glosses: an annotated sentence-based reading of Tang. 1075/Fr. 6(11)”.
Zaytsev, Viacheslav, and Andrew West. “Preliminary study of a manuscript fragment in an unidentified script from the Western Xia Shānzuǐgōu site”.
Zaytsev, Viacheslav, and Andrew West. “Preliminary study of a manuscript fragment in an unidentified script from the Western Xia Shānzuǐgōu site”.
A new volume on #Tangut studies dedicated to the anniversary of Prof. Mikhail Sofronov has just been published. Happy to have received a copy from our Editor Sergey Dmitriev! 🙏
Lots of great studies inside, including two modest ones, co-authored by me with @babelstone.bsky.social and Chung-pui Tai.
