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Study practice
Start with a short passage you can inspect. Record what the source actually shows before choosing a transcription, grammar, or translation. A reliable analysis is a chain of small, reversible decisions.
Study practice
The witness
A witness is the surviving object or copy that carries text: a tablet, inscription, manuscript or printed edition based on one. Record its material, provenance if known, date range, damage and line numbering. One literary work can have several witnesses that disagree. An edition is an argued representation of them, not the object itself.
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A reading check
Worked question
Take a published line with a facsimile. Write six labelled rows: physical trace, sign reading, transliteration, segmentation, gloss, translation. Which rows are supplied by an editor?
Show the analysis
At minimum, the reading and transliteration involve editorial choices; segmentation, gloss and translation add further analysis. Mark damage before filling it in.