Sanzang (三藏)

Sanzang is a compact and simple cross-platform machine translation system. This program is especially useful for translating from CJK languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), and it is very suitable for working with ancient and otherwise difficult texts. Due to its origins in translating texts from the Chinese Buddhist canon, the program is called Sanzang (三藏), a literal translation of the Sanskrit word Tripiṭaka, which is a general term for the Buddhist canon.

Unlike most other machine translation systems, Sanzang is small and approachable. Any user can develop his or her own translation rules, and these rules are simply stored in a text file that the program applies at runtime.

Notice: Sanzang 1.0 has been released, the first in the 1.x series. Users who have installed earlier versions of Sanzang are encouraged to uninstall these before installing the new version of Sanzang.

Sanzang Documentation

• Sanzang Readme
• Sanzang Manual
• License text for the GPL v3

Downloads and Source

• Sanzang on RubyGems
• Sanzang on Freecode
• Sanzang: Git Repository
• Sanzang: Download Archives

Current Status

The Sanzang translation engine is ready for use. Running on a mid-range PC with a translation table of approximately 6000 rules, sanzang batch can generate translation listing files for the entire CBETA standard corpus (Taishō volumes 1-55, and 85) in less than an hour. The next major phase will be the development of a larger and more reliable translation table, which will also be made freely available.