The OG(H)AM project's final Og(h)am of the Month for July 2025, in memory of Dr Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk and in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to ogam scholarship and of his support for our project.

ogham.glasgow.ac.uk/index.php/og...

Soon on immarkus.xmarkus.org : select your favorite models from Huggingface, the Github of AI models; or add your own.
Turns out freely available Chinese models like QWEN perform well on early printed Latin texts -better than others.
Get in touch if interested in testing or further collaboration.

Not only a fiercely competent Sinologist (though he would never admit that), but also the best and most loving dad. The grief is as a shoreless sea.

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we, the family of Andrew West, confirm his peaceful passing on 10th July 2025. The BabelStone legacy will be continued by colleagues and friends.
corp.unicode.org/pipermail/un...

Dr West was one of the most remarkable scholars out there. He could read scripts that were extinct for a millennium -- Tangut, Khitan, Sanskrit, Tibetan; derive meaning from even tiny scraps of paper that time had preserved for us.

May Dr. West be reborn in the Pure Land of Amithaba

Me in August 2016 with the enormous Tangut inscription standing at the entrance to the Western Xia tombs near Yinchuan ...

I've just heard the terrible news that my friend - and friend of many here - Andrew West, @babelstone.co.uk, the incomparably brilliant Sinologist and Tangutologist passed away suddenly but peacefully on 10th July. 1/2

These 6 characters and the Jin Emperor's signature mark are all that remain of the 12th-century Jurchen Small Script!

@babelstone.co.uk and I submitted a proposal for its Unicode encoding – a vital step for covering all four extinct #Khitan and #Jurchen scripts.

www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...

First step towards the encoding of Jurchen *small script* characters, by @cosmicore.bsky.social and myself www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...

For Japanese Studies folks: I’ve ported the NDL’s kuzushiji OCR to run directly in your web browser.
ndlkotenocr-lite-web.netlify.app
No GPU or installation needed. First-time use may take a few minutes to download the model, but after that, it should transcribe each image in about ten seconds.

BDRC is excited to announce the release of the first publicly available desktop app for Tibetan OCR. This is a beta release and we plan to further refine the OCR models and add additional functionality. For the full story and github download link, visit our news site. www.bdrc.io/blog/2025/03...

Transliterating Japanese like an Assyriologist: 🤨

すべての人間は、生まれながらにして自由であり、かつ、尊厳と権利とについて平等である。
su-be-te-no REN.JIAN-wá, SHENG-ma-re-na-ga-ra-ni ši-te ZI.YOU-de a-ri, ka-tsu, ZUN.YAN-to QUAN.LI-to-ni tsu-i-te PING.DENG-de a-ru.
'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.'

A new volume on #Tangut studies dedicated to the anniversary of Prof. Mikhail Sofronov has just been published. Happy to have received a copy from our Editor Sergey Dmitriev! 🙏

Lots of great studies inside, including two modest ones, co-authored by me with @babelstone.bsky.social and Chung-pui Tai.