Overview

I had an opportunity to convert Word files to TEI/XML files. Upon investigation, in addition to official TEI tools such as TEIGarage Conversion, I found a conversion example in TEI Publisher:

https://teipublisher.com/exist/apps/tei-publisher/test/test.docx.xml

The above example appeared to convert Word style information into TEI tags, so I tried this approach. For this project, I used the python-docx library with the goal of using it independently of TEI Publisher.

Word File

I created a prototype Word file like the one below. All styles are provisional, but I created styles such as “tei:persName” and “tei:warichu” and changed their visual styling such as color. The mechanism works by applying styles to perform simple structuring.

Conversion to TEI/XML

I created a script that takes the above Word file as input and converts it to TEI/XML, primarily based on style information. I plan to share it via pip or similar in the future.

An example of the converted TEI/XML is below. There is still much room for improvement, but I was able to convert it into a valid TEI/XML file.

Below is an example displayed in a TEI/XML viewer I am developing separately. Styles such as <rt place="left"> and red text have not yet been applied, but person names and interlinear notes have been successfully reproduced.

Summary

While complex structures may be difficult, I believe that being able to convert text created in Word to TEI/XML in a reasonably intended form could help lower the barrier to adopting TEI/XML. I plan to continue experimenting with this approach.