After the Myanmar Language Spelling book, my great find was the Myanmar to Myanmar Language dictionary called “ခရီးဆောင်မြန်မာအဘိဓါန်”(Traveler’s Myanmar Dictionary) in PDF format. It is the updated (1999) version of the Myanmar Dictionary published in 1991. I was lucky to own the five volume Myanmar Dictionary published 1978-1980 by the Myanmar Language Commission and didn’t know the 1991 version. My version contained the valuable front matter on the characteristics of the Myanmar Language and tips on the use of the Dictionary, as well a substantial amount of illustrations in beautiful line drawings. I don’t know about the intermediate version, this Traveler’s version include only the (i) guide to pronunciation, (ii) list of abbreviations, and (iii) alphabetical order, from among the characteristics of the Myanmar language and doesn’t include any illustrations at all.
The electronic Traveler’s dictionary circulating principally on the Facebook is a scanned version with clickable alphabet list that would take you to the first page of entries for a given alphabet and a back-key to take you back to the alphabet list on every page.
There is an application derived from this Traveler’s Dictionary both for Android and iPhones called the DMNL Myanmar Dictionary. This application uses the SQLite database and is a nice addition to Myanmar dictionaries. However not all information available in the Traveler’s dictionary, and the entries were limited to the head word and its definition(s), pronunciation, and grammatical information only. Alphabetical order is very complicated in our language and navigation through a dictionary is a nightmare even for native speakers.
As for the technology to make the navigation through the text fast and trouble-free, I guess the first choice would be the database approach, only if all the information in the printed dictionary is available!
Next, if all information could be converted to text, a PDF version would be fine with its default search-ability (though with some limitations for the Myanmar language). OCR on the currently available PDF file seems impossible because of the quite poor resolution.
So the only available choice for me to try to improve on the electronic Traveler’s Dictionary would be to extend what is available now. That is, to make the navigation to pages easier by extending hyperlinks to the basic syllable rhymes level.
There is an application derived from this Traveler’s Dictionary both for Android and iPhones called the DMNL Myanmar Dictionary. This application uses the SQLite database and is a nice addition to Myanmar dictionaries. However not all information available in the Traveler’s dictionary, and the entries were limited to the head word and its definition(s), pronunciation, and grammatical information only. Alphabetical order is very complicated in our language and navigation through a dictionary is a nightmare even for native speakers.
As for the technology to make the navigation through the text fast and trouble-free, I guess the first choice would be the database approach, only if all the information in the printed dictionary is available!
Next, if all information could be converted to text, a PDF version would be fine with its default search-ability (though with some limitations for the Myanmar language). OCR on the currently available PDF file seems impossible because of the quite poor resolution.
So the only available choice for me to try to improve on the electronic Traveler’s Dictionary would be to extend what is available now. That is, to make the navigation to pages easier by extending hyperlinks to the basic syllable rhymes level.
Workflow
- Import the pages 1-48 of the dictionary as layers into GIMP. This corresponds to all the front matter and dictionary text body for the first consonant “က”. Add text on the cover page. Export as PDF pages.
- Merge the pages in PDFsam.
- Open the file in LibreOffice Draw and add hyperlinks to the syllable rhymes level. Export as PDF and is done.
For this post I’ll skip the first two steps and deal only with the third and last.
Open merged PDF in LibreOffice
Open the merged PDF in LibreOffice and it is opened in the Draw module:
Duplicate page-7 and 8 and move to end
Go to page-7 by clicking in the Navigator window and open the Page menu. Click Duplicate Page.
This page is duplicated as page-8 (highlighted). Open the View menu and click Page Pane.
The current page (page-8) is seen selected in the (1) Page Pane. (2) Open Page menu and click Move and then select Move to End. Now the duplicate page is moved to end and becomes page-49. Do this to duplicate and move the original page-8 also.
Go to page-7 to add hyperlink for the first consonant “က”. (1) Open Shapes, select Rectangle, Rounded (2) Draw a rectangle and fill with orange color. You can do this by opening Format menu, clicking Area and selecting the orange color. Then select Text Box from the Insert menu and place it over the red rectange and type “က”. Its size can be increased or decreased using the Format/Text menu.
Adding text for syllables hyperlink
Go to page-49. (1) Cover up the curving arrow figure by drawing a rectangle over it and fill it with white. Then type the desired text on it. (2) add the shapes marked with blue line. On the left side of the first column of syllables add a rectangular column and fill it with orange. Checking pages corresponding to these syllables enter the page number and size it appropriately. After the first column has been completed copy it a place each for the remaining three columns and modify the page numbers as appropriate. This is done also for the continuation of syllables list in page-50.
Adding text on the margins
This is independent of other components and could be done at any time. The syllabes corresponding to those on page-49 and 50 at typed-in at appropriate places enclosed in red boxes. They are meant to help the reader identify syllables if more than one exist on a particular page. Once the spelling book has been saved as a PDF file you could search these syllables with “Find” and get to the desired page.
Change the cover
Page-1 shows the original cover.
You can replace it with your own by first clicking View/Master at page-1, and a blank space appeared. Here click Page/Set Background Image and select your image.
Now the new image is displayed. Here you can see some margin left at the bottom. To eliminate it click Properties then Margin and select None.
Adding hyperlink
To add consonant hyperlink go to page-7. Select Hyperlink from Insert menu.
In the popup that appeared (1) select Document. Now on page-7 select the text က and you will see that it appears in the space for Text:. Click icon (2) and the popup Target in Document appears (3). Select Page 49 and click Apply. Now it appears in Target and URL of the Hyperlink popup. Now click Apply and the hyperlink will be saved.
To add syllables hyperlink, go to page-49, use the same process as in the last two screen shots to create hyperlinks in page-49 and 50. The following shows completed process for the first syllable.
Testing the hyperlink
When you hover your mouse pointer over text (here number) with hyper linkthe pointer changes into a finger icon. When you Ctrl-click, it will take you to your target, here page -23. When you’ve saved the file as PDF, you’ll just need to point and click.
Navigating back to the Consonant and Syllable hyperlink pages
One or both of the following hyperlinks are place on every page except page-7. To be able to do so the link text and arrow icon were placed on a rectangular shape filled with white color so as to cover up the navigation link image that existed in the original document. I couldn’t find a way to paste the new navigation links on each page automatically. So it was done manually.
Saving the file
Select Export As from the File menu to saved the file as PDF.
The output of this exercise “GPLO_MyanDict-[က].pdf” is shared here.
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