4. THE TRANSLATION FIELDS
The 'Translation' fields appear at the bottom right of the OVERVIEW layout in Fig 2.1.
Fig. 3.13 Date and translation fields
The Translation fields consist of the following, treated below briefly in turn:
DATE (purple)
The date field on the far left in Fig. 3.13 above records the date of the record, or at least the date it might have been published in a list. Other fields shown in Fig. 3.13 relate to the translation.
ENGLISH (light grey)
The English (light grey) field is the second of the two ‘original record’ fields, ‘Australian’ (dark grey) being the first. This is where the original translation is given. Some of the earliest entries made in the databases for the ‘English’ field were loose versions, but later it was decided to be precisely faithful to the original recording.
ENGLISH JS MAIN (yellow)
The ‘English JS Main’ (Eng JSM) field, previously mentioned at Figs 2.7 and 2.8, is a simplified and standardised rendering of the ‘English’ field. Consequently, for example, where the original record might have had translations 'little', 'narrow', 'short', 'sixpence', 'small' in the English column, these might have all become ‘little’ in the Eng JSM column. The purpose of this is to assist in searches for an Australian word, so that a search for ‘little’ will result in finds for all original records given as 'little', 'narrow', 'short', 'sixpence', 'small’.
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CONCEPT (dark yellow)
The ‘Concept’ ('ccpt') field is the Developer’s speculative suggestion of an underlying meaning of the word.
ENGLISH JS DFX tense (gold, red print)
The ‘English JS DFX tense’ ('Eng JS DFX') field is used to record standard amplifications of the basic meaning of a word, such as, for verbs, ‘did’ (past), ‘will’ (future), '-ing' (continuous); and, for nouns, ‘in’ or ‘at’, for locative case, ‘of’ for possessive, ‘to’ for allative (motion towards), ‘from’ for elative (motion away), ‘for’ for purposive, ‘by’ for causal and the like. Originally these elements were included in the English JSM field, but they reduced the potential for matches, and thus for finds when searches were undertaken, and so this field was introduced.
ENGLISH JS ADJ (pale yellow)
The ‘English JS Adj’ ('Eng JS Adj') field began as a simple adjectival field, for use for such entries as ‘white cockatoo’, ‘blue gum’, ‘black duck’, ‘gigantic lily’. These would be rendered as shown below.
Fig. 3.14 English JS ‘main’ and ‘adj’ fields
Later the ‘English JS Adj’ field came to be used for subordinate information generally, not strictly or simply adjectival.
COMMENT (cream)
The ‘Comment’ field occurs in two places on the OVERVIEW layout, one of which is to the right of the ‘English JS Adj’ field.
Fig. 3.15 Location of the Comment field on the OVERVIEW layout
This is where additional information for an entry, which might be a comment or a query or other observation, can be placed.
Fig. 3.16 Part of the Comment field can be seen on the far right above
CHARACTER BANK
At the top of the OVERVIEW screen, superimposed on the elaboration bars, is a grey ‘Character bank’ field. It includes lines and characters that can be copied for any desired use such as when compiling explanatory notes or transcription indicators. It is complementary to the Mac cht sets resource.
Fig. 3.17 The grey Character bank
For information on how to set up this ‘character bank’ see 13.2 Technical digression.
5. ADDITIONAL FIELDS OFF SCREEN TO THE RIGHT
Further to the right on the OVERVIEW layout (off screen on a standard computer monitor) other information is to be found in field columns, some of which will be described later. It is not really possible to say where or what these fields might be, because beyond the opening screen in any layout in any of the Bayala databases the fields presented are just for convenience, and can be, and often are, readily changed. They might include fields such as ‘categories’, ‘parts of speech’, ‘informant’, ‘provider’ or many more. There are 511 fields in the ALLSYD database, many of which are rarely used, but any could be placed in the area to the right, to reveal occurrences of whatever the field in question was seeking to show.
In short, in all of the Bayala databases there are additional layouts. These layouts display additional information in different arrangements to suit particular purposes. See 10. Database Layouts.
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