On sources and translations

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Description: SOURCES: Most of the legal material (laws and regulations) in OBL up to 2007 comes ultimately from two printed sources: "The Burma Code" - from the British period to the mid 1950s, published by the Government of the Union of Burma (Myanmar), and "Myanmar Laws" - by year from 1988-2007, published by the Office of the Myanmar Attorney-General. The initial task of selecting and scanning this material up to 2004 and putting it online was done by the Burma Lawyers? Council (BLC). Other websites, including OBL, have copied or drawn on these scans. Legislation between 1954 and 1988 is largely in Burmese. We are in the process of scanning this, uploading in Burmese and seeking translations. Other sources we have used, especially for the more recent material (English and Burmese), include websites such as Myanmars.net, the Myanmar Police Force, the President?s Office, several ministries and the Government dailies - "The New Light of Myanmar" (English) and the "Mirror" ("Kyemon") and "Myanmar Alin" (Burmese). We have also used texts from the Displacement Solutions 2009 compilation of Burmese land legislation,"Housing, Land and Property Rights in Burma - The Current Legal Framework". Where no reliable online source was accessible, OBL has scanned the original printed material, where available. Since some of these texts were blurred or truncated in the margins, we have used square brackets to indicate any words in the original which are missing or unclear. We have noticed recently that some of the online versions contain spelling and other mistakes not in the original. We have begun to run spell-checks to eliminate these mistakes, checking against the original printed versions and leaving errors in the original in place....TRANSLATIONS: Most legal material in OBL up to 2007 is in the form of official English translations. Later material, especially since 2011, exists mainly in Burmese, with a number of official and unofficial translations of the more prominent texts. "Official", especially referring to recent material, does not necessarily mean good or accurate, and some of the unofficial English translations are superior to the official versions. The Burmese versions are authoritative. OBL?s strategy is to put all available versions - Burmese and English - online, with indications of status and source.... We continue to search for missing texts, both English and Burmese.
Source/publisher: Online Burma/Myanmar Library
Date of entry/update: 2013-06-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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