Editorial Method
Latin–Arabic Version
The reader can choose between three versions of the Glossary: Latin–Arabic, Arabic–Latin or Arabic–English. The Latin–Arabic version is arranged according to the Latin alphabet. The Arabic counterparts to the Latin lemmata are arranged in descending order of frequency: first come the Arabic counterparts most frequent in the sources. Counterparts of the same Arabic root are grouped together. The Arabic terms are translated into English, so that a reader without knowledge of Arabic can consult the Glossary and study the semantic range which lies behind a Latin term.
The reader can choose between a shorter version of the lemma, which shows all Arabic counterparts of a Latin term without quotations, and a longer version, which shows a maximum of two quotations for each source.
Lemmata
The Glossary unites the entries of all Arabic–Latin glossaries printed in modern editions of medieval works that appeared before 2009, when the first lemmata of the ALGloss were published online.
The Latin lemmata comprise all those entries that have a counterpart in the Arabic and that are not gross translator’s mistakes. The Glossary also covers generic and proper names, with the exception of the names of single persons, and hence contains many loan words, especially in botany, zoology and astrology.
The lemmata include a broader range of grammatical categories than is normally found in Latin and Arabic lexica: passive infinitives, participles, adverbs, comparative and superlative forms, phrases of several words, and relative clauses. This has proved a practical way to picture the complex translation process from a Semitic to an Indo-European language.
Spelling and Vocalization
The spelling of the Latin lemmata is standardized according to classical usage if the word is of classical origin. Medieval Latin words retain the spelling of their source in the form chosen by the modern editor. The spelling of the quotations is always that of the source; hence, some quotations are in classical spelling, some in medieval.
The spelling of the Arabic lemmata is standardized according to the spelling adopted by Wehr’s Arabic–English Dictionary, whenever possible, but quotations retain the spelling chosen by the modern editor and thus may contain unclassical Arabic spellings. An exception is the spelling of the hamza, which is normalized in order to facilitate searching.
The transliteration of the Arabic follows the rules laid down by the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, with the exception that the diphthongs aw and ay are used instead of au and ai.
English Translation
The English translation of the Arabic term does not give the general meaning as found in Arabic lexica, but the specific meaning which the term has in the quotations. Hence, in a good number of cases, the meaning is not recorded in the standard Arabic lexica such as Lisān, Freytag, Lane, Dozy and Wehr. The translation does not cover meanings which the term may have in other passages of the source that are not quoted. When an Arabic term has several English meanings that belong to different semantic fields, the meanings are separated by a semicolon.
Quotations
The selection of quotations follows a routine method. If a Latin term appears more than twice in a source, only two occurrences are quoted, usually the first and last.
For pragmatic reasons, the Glossary is more economical in Arabic quotations than in Latin quotations. But as a rule, each English meaning of a term is documented by at least one Arabic quotation.
The context of a quotation is sometimes elucidated by additional words in square brackets: [sc. …]. Variant readings are also noted in square brackets: [var. …].
Frequency
Thanks to the diligence of the editors, many Arabic–Latin glossaries give complete lists of occurrences of a term. In these cases, the Arabic and Latin Glossary notes the frequency of a term in the list of sources. For example: the term bellum as a translation of ḥarb appears 125 times in Abū Maʿšar’s The Great Conjunctions, and once in al-Qabīṣī’s Introduction. The sources are listed in chronological sequence of their translation.
Arabic–Latin Version
The Arabic–Latin version is organized according to Arabic roots. The arrangement of lemmata within the root follows the order familiar from Western lexica such as Wehr: the verbal forms are arranged according to the stems I–XII, then follow the nominal forms (which are ordered according to the length of the morphological fʿl/bsml form), the verbal nouns and the participles.
The Arabic–Latin version can be used, on the one hand, as a tool for studying the techniques of medieval translators, and, on the other hand, as a tool for understanding the vocabulary of Arabic philosophical and scientific texts – since the Latin translators were nearly contemporary and often very intelligent readers and interpreters of these Arabic texts.
Arabic–English Version
The Arabic–English version of the Glossary serves as a dictionary of scientific and philosophical Arabic of the eighth to twelfth centuries AD. It is organized according to Arabic roots, just as the Arabic-Latin version.