The Role of Multilingual Computing in Jewish Studies

Academics, and other scholars in Jewish Studies, base their research on published and unpublished materials that encompass a variety of scripts and languages such as Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Slavic, and other European, Semitic, North African and Asiatic languages. The number of texts and research tools in Hebrew, and other Latin and non-Latin
scripts available electronically are increasing exponentially. They may appear in the form of text, images or sound, or, in combination. Each medium presents its own particular problems for storage and retrieval, as well as for the integration of material into a usable corpus or database, but with time, these problems become less complicated. Improvements in technology are rapidly changing Judaica bibliography and Jewish Studies research methods - improvements that directly impact scholars' ability to handle multi script and multilingual data in a computing environment. Little research, however, has addressed the technical needs of academics working with the diverse group of languages associated with Jewish Studies.ten.
A brief examination is made of some older technologies that incorporate multi-lingual capabilities, and then an introduction to Unicode and the move towards the cross-platform exchange of multi-script data. An overview is then provided of the types of multi-lingual electronic tools used and created by Jewish Studies scholars as they carry out their research. The appendix provides a list of terms and their definitions commonly associated with electronic publishing and multi-lingual computing.