Project Update 04/11

[enb34]

This week we have continued to make progress on our XSLT and visualizations. We've completed the XSLT for rendering the text on our site, and now only need to break down the text into its different chapters and apply CSS formatting. We're continuing to figure out the best visualizations for the text; we would like to show the quantity of each marked device by chapter and a comparison of the tagged words and phrases, as well as the contrast between the amount of onomatopeia present in both texts. I'm also currently looking into how to render the songs and poems from both documents into a single document for separate analysis.

[mtm80]

At first I was going to suggest an SVG chart to visualize the counts by chapter but then I thought that an old fashioned grid could work just fine for that. Say for example, listing the chapters on the horizontal axis and the marked devices on the vertical axis. I'm using the grid chart on the "Homestuck" project as an example for what might work well.

[brucknerp]

For our project, we also are thinking about how to show the quantity each marked device (particle), but are using line graphs because we are specifically interested in change over time. Maybe consider what your (in)dependent variables are and go from there?

Also, what CSS are you planning for the text? Will you be highlighting the different types of devices?

[richiebful]

I know that part of your original plan was to take the translations and look at how they translated tricky stuff like songs, onomatopoeia, and other word play. Do you have any plan to tag those similar elements in the text? (In other words, linking "How doth the little crocodile" to it's Japanese equivalent) It's a little bit late in the game to be working with the XML, but I think it would improve the reading views if they had the English and Japanese side-by-side synced up.

[danakaufhold]

@richiebful We have tagged those elements in the text! As of right now, we are discussing different ways of approaching comparison; Emily is actually hoping to complete a more in-depth analysis of the songs like what you mentioned. Tonight I at least put both the English and the Japanese into their rightful places on the site, so you can see what it will eventually look like in terms of direct comparison. It's hard to do 1:1 matching in all cases, though, since the texts lean on different literary devices; for example, rhyme is a huge part of the charm of Alice in English but is nonexistent in Japanese.

[Idi0teque]

Wow, didn't realize the rhyme was nonexistent in Japanese! That kind of sucks; with non-1:1 translation, could you just link like big chunks where similar things appear, and display different things depending on whether or not the translations match?