The Electronic Data and Retrieval of the Secret History of the Mongols

Jiang Di

Lab. of Phonetics and Computational Linguistics, Institute of Ethnology & Anthropology,

CASS, Beijing, 100081, China, jiangdi@cass.org.cn

Abstract

This paper firstly gives a brief introduction to the background of the Secret History of the Mongols, which is a great classical historical work written with Chinese- transliterated characters from Mongolian in 13 century. Now nearly every people and expert thinks the book is an invaluable treasure and great cultural heritage for China and the world. However, it is pity to say that many valuable resources within the works have yet to be explored and unearthed. To satisfy the needs of studying history, literature, and language from the important historical document, we build up a Retrieval System of the Secret History of the Mongols and its database.

This ancient handwriting book contains rather rich text information, and all the rules of information should be the principle of forming an electronic database, and information be the contents of the database. There are in the original book multi-types of information, including layouts, volumes, chapters, characters, word-for-word translation, and Chinese text translation, each format of which has been approached in details and divided separately with markers. On the base of analysis, our project builds up a whole electronic retrieval system for the great book, which resolves the returning to the original shape of the archaic handwriting form with three lines representing one content.

The retrieval result includes numbers of traditional academic chapters and sections, which are very important for users, and numbers of original volumes and pages, and retrieval objects’ positions in the electronic text. In addition, the system makes full use of a concordance technology, which can send out retrieval objects with their contexts.

Keywords: the Secrete History of the Mongols, electronic retrieval system, Chinese-transliterated characters from Mongolian, complicated text

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Shuang, Fu The translateration and studies on the Secret History of the Mongols, Huhehot: Inner Mongol People Press (in Mongolian), (2002)

Eldengtei, ect., A collated edition of the Secret History of the Mongols. Huhehot: Inner Mongol People Press. (1980)

Anonymous. The Secret History of the Mongols, the version from Sibu Congkan. (13 Century)

Authors: Jiang, Di, male, 1954-, professor, computational linguistics and Sino-Tibetan languages, jiangdi@cass.org.cn, Building 6, 27 Zhongguancun Southern Street, Beijing. Postcode: 100081.