Cutting and joining phrases

Everything on the editing page changes what a phrase says. This changes where it stops.

A phrase is a sense group, and where the sense groups fall is a judgement somebody makes while reading — which means the division a model produced on its first pass, or the one-phrase-per-sentence of a video started empty, is exactly what a person who knows the language wants to move. It takes three buttons, at the foot of the ✎ form:

join previous is the same operation asked of the phrase before, and it is also how a run drawn bare — a phrase marked plain, or a stretch of the video’s own framing, neither of which has a cloud of its own to open — is reached: from either side. (A phrase of the language that nobody has glossed yet is not bare: it has its cloud and its ✎.)

Each opens a sheet over the form, named after what it does — cut segment 3 chunk 0 in two, join segment 3 chunk 0 to the next — and writes nothing until its button. ✕, a click beside the sheet, or Esc closes it.

1. Where a phrase may be cut#

At a space, and nowhere else — for a language whose words are separated by one. The reason is the check and not taste: the phrases of a caption joined back with the language’s separator have to be the caption again, and wo rd is not word however the spaces are tidied. Japanese and Chinese, which write no separator, divide between any two characters.

So the sheet shows the phrase’s text with a ✂ at every place it may be cut, and no others:

• Pick where it divides. Joined back with the space, the two halves have to be this caption again — which is why a word is never cut through.
• For Japanese and Chinese: Pick where it divides. This language writes no spaces, so it divides between any two characters.
• A phrase of one word: This phrase is one word, and a phrase of a language written with spaces divides at a space. Join it to a neighbour instead. One character, in Japanese or Chinese: This phrase is a single character, so there is nothing to divide.

With a single place to cut, it is picked for you.

2. What each half is given#

Dividing the text is arithmetic. Dividing the gloss is not: nothing in the data says which half of a meaning belongs to which half of a phrase. So the sheet shows two columns, first phrase and second phrase, and proposes what goes in each, in boxes you type over:

A phrase nobody has glossed divides into two phrases nobody has glossed. In Japanese and Chinese, where such a phrase carries the reading proposed from its words, each half is given the reading of its own words instead — the whole reading on the first half would make it look written.

Press divide. A phrase that carries a note divides like any other: the note stays with the first half (the note stayed with the first chunk), and a join puts two notes end to end.

3. Joining#

join next shows the two texts, first · second, and the one phrase they become, in one column of boxes to type over. The texts go end to end with the language’s separator — so the caption is reproduced character for character, and no check can fail — the transliterations and the meanings with a space, the vocabulary lines with their own middle dot. What could not simply be run together is said in a note under the boxes: two different colours (the first one’s stands), two meanings written to be read apart — and a phrase now past seven words, which the checker warns about: That is 9 words in one phrase; the conventions ask for two to six, and the checker warns above seven.

Press join. On the last phrase of a caption the sheet says chunk 2 is the last of segment 3: there is nothing after it to join it to, and the button stays grey.

4. Afterwards#

Every phrase after the change has a new number, so the caption is drawn again from the list the server sends back, and the sheet says so: The phrase is two phrases now. Segment 3 has 3 of them, and the transcript has been drawn again from the file. Its button becomes close.

What is written is annotations.json, and that is the whole of the video’s annotation: the answer it was built from was folded in when it was added, and the batches went with it, so there is nothing left on the shelf that could put the old division back (A video’s files).

5. What it refuses#

The division is put through check_annotations.py before it is written, like any edit, and refused if it brings in an error the file did not already have — but never for a box left empty. Each half may come out glossed, blank, or glossed in part: the second half of a glossed phrase usually has its meaning still to write, and is saved so, for you to fill in the ✎ form (the checker lists it until you do). A join is the same.

A page left open is safe as well as stale: the next divide from it is refused by name rather than made to the wrong phrase.