1 Introduction

This section introduces the significance of Chinese calligraphy as a carrier of Chinese culture and the necessity of its international dissemination. It points out the obstacles posed by linguistic and cultural differences to the cross-cultural transmission of calligraphy, and elaborates on the purpose and application scope of constructing the Chinese Calligraphy Chinese-English Language Database (CeLaD) and its platform (CeLapCal).

2 Importance of Constructing Chinese Calligraphy Language Data

This section focuses on the importance of constructing Chinese calligraphy language data. It notes that Westerners often face difficulties in understanding Chinese calligraphy, and that the translation and introduction of calligraphy overseas are crucial for its international dissemination. Currently, the translation of Chinese calligraphy faces two major challenges: inconsistent translation of terminology and insufficient research on translation. The inconsistency in translating terminology stems from the high density of culture-loaded terms in calligraphy texts and the lack of dedicated terminology databases and bilingual dictionaries. The current state of research on Chinese calligraphy translation reveals limited studies abroad, mostly by Chinese scholars, with research focusing on the integration of calligraphy and computational technology, as well as philosophical and aesthetic perspectives. Domestically, although there is considerable attention to calligraphy studies, research on calligraphy translation remains underdeveloped, with scattered research topics and narrow corpus coverage. To address these issues, constructing a Chinese calligraphy language database is essential, requiring the integration of language resources and the development of corpora and terminology databases. However, specialized corpora and Chinese-English terminology databases for Chinese calligraphy are extremely rare, with language data being scattered and lacking large-scale, digital integration.

3 Design and Implementation of CeLaD

This section details the design and implementation process of the CeLaD database, aiming to provide data support for the standardization of Chinese calligraphy terminology translation. The design phase emphasizes system accuracy, usability, and scalability, while the application phase focuses on adaptability and effectiveness. The construction approach includes collecting Chinese-English language data on Chinese calligraphy, performing unified formatting, data cleaning, alignment, structuring, and metadata annotation, ultimately integrating it into CeLaD and developing it into the retrieval-oriented data platform CeLapCal. Data sources cover Chinese calligraphy works and translations, academic literature, news articles, etc. Among these, works and translations contain a large number of Chinese characters and English words, a considerable number of sentence and paragraph pairs, as well as monolingual sentences. Academic literature and news data are also carefully selected and organized. Although the news data includes a small number of sentence pairs not related to Chinese calligraphy, these data contribute to discussions on terminology translation.

4 Applications of CeLaD

This chapter details the construction process of the CeLapCal platform based on CeLaD language data and its applications across multiple fields. The CeLapCal platform consists of a corpus and a terminology database. The terminology database includes 2,197 manually verified Chinese-English term pairs, covering categories such as calligraphy styles, personal names, and stele and inscription titles. Terminology extraction employs a word embedding-based method, using pre-trained word vector models to capture semantic relationships between words and identifying bilingual terms by calculating vector similarity. The platform is built using Java and MySQL, combined with the SpringBoot and Tymeleaf frameworks, and employs ELK technology to achieve efficient retrieval functionality. Inverted indexing and Echarts are used to enhance retrieval efficiency and user experience.

In linguistic research, the CeLapCal platform provides foundational data for corpus linguistics, supporting keyword searches and in-depth analysis of language data. In translation research and practice, the platform offers accurate references for terminology translation, helping translators understand and handle issues of lexical collocation, thereby improving the accuracy and fluency of sentence and text translation. In lexicography, the platform provides rich lexical resources and language materials, aiding in the identification of multiple translations for a single term and supporting the comprehensiveness and practicality of dictionaries. In teaching assistance, CeLapCal provides students with authentic contexts and learning materials, helping to enhance their terminology translation skills and cultural sensitivity. In the field of machine translation, the platform’s domain-specific language data contributes to improving the accuracy and consistency of translations for specialized texts and optimizing translation styles and expressions.

5 Conclusion

This study constructs the Chinese Calligraphy Chinese-English Language Database (CeLaD) and its application platform (CeLapCal). It integrates texts from multiple fields of calligraphy, employs machine crawling and manual review to ensure data quality, explores technical means to promote the cross-cultural dissemination and academic research of calligraphy, and provides insights for the construction of specialized domain language databases.