I have now translated 75% of the 10th century Arabic Christian historian Agapius, from the French of A. A. Vasiliev. Of course the translation has no scholarly value — more in the way of research notes. But there are a considerable number of people who do not read French easily, if at all, and so to make this version has utility. I hope also to trigger a “virtuous circle”: the existence of this translation may inspire someone to make an English translation direct from the published Arabic. This in turn would lead someone to get an ultra-violet photograph of the Florence manuscript, fill the lacunae, and make a full scholarly critical edition and translation.
I’m typing this while scanning the page images of the remaining part; scan, turn page, scan, etc. Each quarter is around 150 pages of the Patrologia Orientalis. I’m working on a chunk of no more than 50 pages at a time. Any more than that, and I get oppressed by the size of the task before me, and depressed.
So far I have done part 3, part 4 and part 1. Now to begin part 2.