--- title: "Armenian AutoEpiDoc — Tamrazyan 2026" description: "Armenian epigraphy is well documented in printed scholarship such as the multi-volume Divan Hay Vimagrut'yan (DHV)." authors: ["Hamest Tamrazyan", "Emile Cornamusaz", "Emanuela Boros"] year: 2026 venue: "Proceedings of the 10th Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature 2026" source: "https://aclanthology.org/2026.latechclfl-1.2/" doi: "10.18653/v1/2026.latechclfl-1.2" licence: "CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tamrazyan-2026-armenian-autoepidoc-automated-extraction-encoding/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tamrazyan-2026-armenian-autoepidoc-automated-extraction-encoding/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/2/) / Armenian AutoEpiDoc: Automated Extraction and Encoding of Armenian Inscriptions into EpiDoc TEI/XML # Armenian AutoEpiDoc: Automated Extraction and Encoding of Armenian Inscriptions into EpiDoc TEI/XML **Authors:** [Hamest Tamrazyan](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hamest-tamrazyan/), Emile Cornamusaz, [Emanuela Boros](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/emanuela-boros/) · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the 10th Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature 2026 · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2026.latechclfl-1.2/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2026.latechclfl-1.2.pdf) · [DOI 10.18653/v1/2026.latechclfl-1.2](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.latechclfl-1.2) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7140110567) **Citations:** 0 citations (openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14) ## Summary Armenian epigraphy is well documented in printed scholarship such as the multi-volume Divan Hay Vimagrut'yan (DHV). However, it has almost no machine-readable editions, so these inscriptions are missing from TEI/EpiDoc-based infrastructures like EAGLE and FAIR Epigraphy. Encoding EpiDoc by hand demands both XML skills and knowledge of Armenian epigraphic conventions, which makes large-scale digitization impractical. The authors present Armenian AutoEpiDoc, which they describe as the first system to turn expert-validated Armenian inscription records into EpiDoc-compliant TEI/XML. It does not rely on OCR. Instead, it takes curated CSV spreadsheets and processes them in three steps: - loads them into a normalized MySQL database, - builds TEI authority files linked to external vocabularies, - serializes each record to XML using rule-based, schema-aware mappings, including a parser for Armenian diplomatic transcription conventions. In pilot comparisons, manual encoding took tens of minutes per inscription, while the system produced a first draft in seconds that needed only targeted correction. Specialists confirmed that Armenian conventions are preserved. The tool lays groundwork for a first standards-aligned digital corpus of Armenian inscriptions. ## Key points - **Pipeline:** The Python ELT workflow has three modules: `csv_to_mysql.py` for ingestion, header normalization and a star schema, `mysql_to_authority_list.py` for authority files, and `mysql_to_epidoc.py` for XPath-based TEI serialization. - **Authority files:** These cover Places, Monuments, Materials and Object Types. Place hierarchies are rebuilt via ``, for example for Artsakh. Materials and object types are aligned with the Getty AAT and EAGLE vocabularies in a `` section. - **Transcription parsing:** Simplified ASCII transcriptions are mapped to EpiDoc elements: - ``/``/`` for abbreviations, - `` for letter-numerals, - ``/`` for ligatures and overlines. Damaged numerals and ambiguous ligatures are flagged for expert review rather than forced into a reading. - **Dates and language:** Each date is recorded using two calendar systems, the Armenian Era and the Gregorian, and all metadata is bilingual (hy/en). - **Context and availability:** Over 80% of Armenian inscriptions are located outside the modern Republic of Armenia. The system is in active use, for example in the Artsakh Epigraphy Atlas, and the code is released at github.com/dhlab-epfl/autoepidoc. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) · [History & humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/history/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{tamrazyan2026armenian, title = {{Armenian AutoEpiDoc: Automated Extraction and Encoding of Armenian Inscriptions into EpiDoc TEI/XML}}, author = {Tamrazyan, Hamest and Cornamusaz, Emile and Boros, Emanuela}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature 2026}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.18653/v1/2026.latechclfl-1.2}, url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.latechclfl-1.2} } ``` - [← previous ArGuard Shared Task: Harmful Content Detection in Arabic Memes and LLM Prompts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/alam-2026-arguard-shared-task-harmful-content/) - [next → ASCAT: An Arabic Scientific Corpus and Benchmark for Advanced Translation Evaluation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/sibaee-2026-ascat-arabic-scientific-corpus-benchmark/) - [↑ back to papers of 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/2/) ## References 3 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Francesco Bianchini. 2023. Looking beyond the text: Opportunities and challenges in the digitisation of sanskrit inscriptions. Can’t Touch This. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Francesco+Bianchini%2E+2023%2E+Looking+beyond+the+text%3A+Opportunities+and+challenges+in+the+digitisation+of+sanskrit+inscriptions%2E+Can%E2%80%99t+Touch+This%2E) 2. Listing 3: Encoding of original date using Armenian and Gregorian calendars Tim Greenwood. 2014. Armenian epigraphy. In Armenian Philology in the Modern Era, pages 101–121. Brill. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Listing+3%3A+Encoding+of+original+date+using+Armenian+and+Gregorian+calendars+Tim+Greenwood%2E+2014%2E+Armenian+epigraphy%2E+In+Armenian+Philology+in+the+Modern+Era%2C+pages+101%E2%80%93121%2E+Brill%2E) 3. Fangchao Liu, John Hindmarch, and Mona Hess. 2023. A review of the cultural heritage linked open data ontologies and models. \#\# Conclusions [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Fangchao+Liu%2C+John+Hindmarch%2C+and+Mona+Hess%2E+2023%2E+A+review+of+the+cultural+heritage+linked+open+data+ontologies+and+models%2E+%5C%23%5C%23+Conclusions)