That's fine, but in the metadata you should do the same thing as in the
text, as the metadata always has the typographically correct flavors of
punctuation and modifiers.
On 4/22/24 7:58 AM, Weijia Cheng wrote:
> Ok, even as I'm creating the repo I'm running into a typography issue.
> Here's how I think I'll solve it:
>
> Al-Maʻarri's full(ish) Arabic name, Abu al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri, has two
> Arabic letters, ayn and hamza, that are both sometimes transliterated
> into apostrophes. A hamza is a glottal stop, which falls under 8.7.5.3.1
> <
https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.7.4/8-typography#8.7.5.3.1>. I have
> read that ayn is often represented as U+02BC
> <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifier_letter_apostrophe>, which is a
> modifying apostrophe as opposed to a punctuation typography, which seems
> very sensible to me.
>
> Unfortunately, trying to create a draft with the author string "Abu
> al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri" crashes when it tries to generate cover.svg, I
> think because it doesn't like the special characters very much.
> Create-draft works fine when I replace the glottal stop and modifier
> apostrophe with normal straight apostrophes, though. However the
> generated cover.svg uses all right-single quotation marks, which looks
> odd to me since it doesn't match the "proper" curling direction of the
> glottal stops. I tested what would happen if I used the special
> apostrophes in cover.svg and that didn't seem to work either (I don't
> think League Spartan even has those characters). So what I'm proposing
> is this comrpomise:
>
> * While creating the draft, and in the metadata, the author string
> will be given as "Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri" (all straight single quotes).
> * In the text, the author will be referred to as "Abu al-ʻAlaʼ" and
> "Abu al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri" with the glottal stop and modifying
> apostrophe (this also will involve modernizing Rihani's
> transliteration, which is "Abu’l-Ala’l-Ma’arri," a soundalike).
> * To generate the cover SVG, the author will be referred to as "Abu
> al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri" (using left single quotation mark for the
> glottal stops and right single quotation mark for the modifying
> apostrophe)
>
> I think that is the most consistent and typographically correct way to
> represent his name. I'm going to do this unless anyone here has any
> objections or can suggest a better way (I would be most curious to hear
> the opinions of any Arabic speakers if there are any in this mailing list).
>
> On Monday, April 15, 2024 at 7:07:57 PM UTC-7 Alex Cabal wrote:
>
> OK, that sounds fine. I suppose if eventually the rest of the volume is
> translated we can add it to our existing volume and update the
> translator slug.
>
> On 4/15/24 8:21 AM, Weijia Cheng wrote:
> > I did consider that, but I personally don't think that's the
> right call
> > in this case. I think that Rihani's choice in organizing his
> translation
> > this way is an additional artistic effort on top of the
> translation that
> > is worth preserving. For instance in the note for the first quatrain
> >
> <
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/50457/pg50457-images.html#xd21e2160 <
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/50457/pg50457-images.html#xd21e2160>> he explains why he selected some verses from another volume to open the collection. I also think his introductory poem and preface are interesting and wouldn't really go into an omnibus collection.
> >
> > I think the most ideal way to present Al-Ma'ari's poetry (if
> copyrights
> > didn't exist) would be in their original (non-overlapping, as far
> as I
> > know) volumes, which have different themes and styles: /Saqt
> az-Zand/,
> > the /Luzumiyyat/, and/The Epistle of Forgiveness/. I don't think
> any of
> > these were translated with any completeness until decades afterwards
> > (for instance I think the first /Saqt az-Zand/ translation is
> from 1972
> >
> <
https://search.worldcat.org/title/saqt-al-zand-the-spark-from-the-flint/oclc/2544201 <
https://search.worldcat.org/title/saqt-al-zand-the-spark-from-the-flint/oclc/2544201>>). In contrast I think Rihani was literally one of the first people to produce a substantial translation of Al-Ma'ari's poetry, so I don't think we are going to get anything better for a while.
>
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