An email this morning tells me that the English translation of the Greek text of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Quaestiones ad Stephanum/Marinum and the catena fragments are all revised and pretty much done. I expect the finished text tomorrow. I must hurry up the Syriac reviser! And then begins the task of getting the thing into printed form and selling it.
Roger Pearse
Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
This is great news! Um . . . waitasecond: “getting the ting into printed form and selling it”??? You mean you’re not just adding this to the resources at the Tertullian site?
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
I do want to put it online and make it freely available.
But the translation probably cost around $3,000 to have made. Now I can afford that, and I could afford to write it off. But there are quite a lot of other untranslated texts also of interest. I can’t afford to keep writing off such sums.
So my idea was to see if I can sell some printed copies to libraries and the like, and get at least some of the money back, before I put it online. If so, I can send the money round again and get some more stuff translated.
I would imagine that there will be a bunch of sales initially, and then it will drop to pretty much nothing. That would seem to be the point at which to put it online. I think I’d retain the copyright, but make it free for non-commercial use.
All open to discussion, of course. If I were a rich man, I’d just hire a room full of translators and give the products away. Being poor — you probably earn more than me — I must at least consider how to fund the next round of stuff.
$3,000?!?! We could almost buy our own ship for that!
Why was it so expensive? The text in Zacagni looked like it would be only about a week’s work, working dawn to dusk each day.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
If you look at the TLG canon of authors, you find that the “Quaestiones ad Stephanum” is 11,826 words, the “Quaestiones ad Marinum” is 3,924 words. Total is just under 16,000 words. This is what the Zamagni edition contains. But at 10c a word, that is $1,600 all by itself. Nor is it possible to get people cheaper; you will find criticisms in this blog elsewhere that I pay too little, in fact.
These two parts are merely an epitome, published by Mai. There are also extensive catena fragments. In the TLG these are 3,594 + 5,215 + 1,458 = 10,200 words, or another $1,000. But these are not all the fragments, merely those published by Mai/Migne. I have been collecting more, and having these done as well. And all this, without getting into editing a Greek text (which I may or may not do).
I know; the text doesn’t look that long. But in reality, everything takes longer and costs more than one would think. I suspect every normal-sized work costs about this much, if you can’t do it yourself and have to hire someone.
It’s not a problem; except that, if I want to do any more translations, I have to see what I can do to recoup the money so I can afford it.
I’m always open to suggestions of ways to do things better…