Scripto·Q – Bilingual Book Reader

The Bilingual Book Reader feature of Scripto·Q will be instrumental for a serious student of the classic works — whether it's about learning the language, or reviewing, verifying and editing available translations. You will be able to browse the included works in both English and the source language (e.g. Pali or Sanskrit) in side-by-side and interlaced views — with both the original script and standard Roman transliteration as options. They will also be packaged for download.

Bilingual parallel reading example with English-Pali ~ from Vitakkasanthana Sutta

For the initial phases of the bilingual text index, the following classics are in the plans:

  • The entire Pali Tipitaka or the oldest compendium of Buddhist teachings — starting with the Sutta Pitaka or the collected discourses of the Buddha — with the complete Pali texts and all freely available translations.
  • Central works of Hindu philosophy such as the Bhagavad Gita, the main Upanishads and the Yoga Sutras — with the original Sanskrit text (both Devanagari and transliteration) and all freely available translations.

In subsequent indexing work, the Scripto·Q bilingual index will begin incorporating a number of important Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist texts in Sanskrit and Tibetan, along with a broader selection of Hindu texts on Vedanta, Tantra, Yoga and other major traditions — each married with any (and all) translations that are freely available.

In the future, should we chance upon volunteers more familiar with Chinese and Japanese language, classic works on Taoism and Zen Buddhism will be included in the bilingual text index. Likewise, with some assistance in Arabic, a number of Sufi works will also be included. Similarly with other traditions of philosophy and mysticism.

In the first sweep of a work, texts will be divided with paragraph-level granularity, ie. one paragraph of Pali or Sanskrit is indexed with a matching English paragraph. In the second sweep, we will zoom down to sentence-level granularity. Word-level granularity is not in the plans, given that few translations are strictly verbatim renderings of the original. With the collaboration of language enthusiasts, though, it'd be wonderful to also provide word-for-word renderings.