An offer of assistance typesetting has come in. I’m going to try to get the manuscript completely finished on Friday, print the thing off, read it, check it and send it off for typesetting. There has to come a point to say, “Enough” and put it out there, whatever might remain to be done.
Month: July 2010
Laying out facing Greek and English – and being laid out by it
The Eusebius book consists of a Word document containing all the Greek for the Quaestiones ad Stephanum, and another one containing all the English translation of that. Then there are further pairs of files; text, translation for Latin; text and translation for Syriac, and so on. Word has no way to get the multiple languages appearing on alternate pages.
For the last three hours I have been experimenting with the trial version of the professional desktop publishing and layout tool, Adobe InDesign. Others may have been tempted, but put off by the terrifying complexity of this tool. So I thought I’d say that you can get this working from a state of complete ignorance in about three hours, and not very difficult hours. Here’s what I did, to get a PDF with alternate Greek and English text.
First, download the trial of InDesign from the Adobe website (you can find that alright using Google, I’m sure). You will need to register for an “account” – just use one of your email accounts and some junk password, but remember it because you will need it later when you start up the trial. It takes a fair old while to download, but that doesn’t matter.
While you’re waiting, start using the free video tutorials on the Adobe site. I’m no great fan of videos, but these were short and easy to watch. I found it useful to rig up external speakers to my laptop, because I had an air-con unit going in the same room. Do maximise the screen while watching!
Now I only watched the following videos:
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Getting started – what is Indesign CS5? (2:33 mins)
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GS-01: Understanding the application window. (6 mins)
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GS-02: New documents (7:35 mins)
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GS-03: Adding page numbers (3:50 mins)
and then I stopped, because I was getting frustrated. The first three are all fine, and usefully it mentions how to set up the book as 7×9″. But then you realise that you are looking at excerpts from the Lynda.com site; and that there are loads more tutorials for each bit. When you look at the fourth one, you feel you have missed something. However all these are worth looking at, and they are free.
By now InDesign has downloaded. Fire it up, and do some of the things you saw in the video. Remember you can pause the video while you try something out!
This tells you how to set up the double-page spread. But it won’t tell you how to add text from Word, nor how to interleave Greek and English.
What I did then was to register at Lynda.com for the rest of the tutorials for InDesign. I recommend you do likewise. They charge $25 a month, and keep right on charging unless you cancel. But the Indesign trial expires after a month, so just buy a month’s worth, and remember to cancel before the end of the month.
This gives you the rest of the tutorials. I watched:
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Inserting, deleting and moving pages (pretty obvious) (7:23)
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Changing page numbering with sections — you do need this, to fiddle with the page numbers for Roman numerals for the intro (5:58)
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Creating and applying master pages — mainly because you’ll do the alternation of Greek and English by customing a master page (5:20)
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Importing text — this is the critical one. You will never manage to guess how you import a word document unless you watch this. The answer is that you do Ctrl-D to choose a .doc file, then click ‘Open’, and then do shift+click to click on an empty frame. This says “paste in the text and create more pages on the end until you run out of text”. Just doing click will leave you with a little red icon at the bottom. (7:49)
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Threading text frames. You need this one as well, to understand how to manage the Greek-English. Because you will be using threading. (4:01)
None of this will tell you exactly what to do for our case, but you need all this stuff. And… it’s really not that long. What I did was get some diet coke (full of caffeine) and some chocolate, and watch them all.
The final bit is described here, in the first reply by Peter Spier. In my case I have one column on the left hand page, for the Greek, and one on the right, for English. Here’s what you do.
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Edit the master page, and create a text frame on the left hand page, and another on the right hand page. Make sure these are not threaded together by using the View|Extras|Show text threads.
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By default you will have a single page, page 1. Add two more pages. Pages 2-3 will be a double page spread in the page viewer.
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Change page 1 to not use the master page by clicking on the black triangle on the top.
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Now click on page 2, and it will display, empty, in the editor.
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Do your Ctrl-D,choose your file of Greek, and do shift+click on page 2. You will find that it creates a whole slew of pages, all with the Greek in the left hand page only.
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Go to page 3, and do the Ctrl-D, open the English, and do shift+click on page 3. That will fill up all the right-hand side pages, and if need be create more.
There you have it! You can now do File|Export to PDF for print, and get a PDF with the two interleaved.
One minor problem. The text and translation don’t line up! Over a few pages, they get out of step.
The answer? You get to fix that manually by adding extra spacing, line breaks, etc! That’s show-business. That’s why InDesign is used for laying out text. But at this point at least you can generate something for proof-checking the whole document!
If only InDesign was not so terrifyingly expensive!
Eusebius once more
He’s getting all Coptic on me
Isn’t it funny how different various groups of scholars are? Some are all free and easy and helpful. Others are all suspicious, riven with rivalries. The first lot respond to enthusiastic but ignorant emails kindly. The second ignore them. The first band together to get things working. The second sit in their various bastions and snipe at each other and the outside world.
Doing an edition of material which exists in Greek, Syriac, Arabic and Coptic throws an interesting light on the various ways these languages are handled online. Everyone knows about the Hugoye list for Syriac studies, started by George Kiraz who also made Syriac unicode fonts of all kinds freely available. He even got the Estrangelo Edessa font included by Microsoft into Windows! Syriacists are all helpful, and Syriac studies online is frankly booming. At Brigham Young University Kristian Heal is putting online a massive collection of Syriac texts. George has reprinted loads of them, which gets them into libraries. In short, every contribution adds to the whole.
Christian Arabic is much the same, not least because late Syriac writers also wrote Christian Arabic, and a lot of the same people are involved on a lower level. The NASCAS google group is where they hang out.
My experience of Coptic and Coptologists, on the other hand, belongs to the other side of the spectrum. There’s the Copts themselves, who are a good bunch. But some of the academics … phew! One sign of this is that only one decent Coptic unicode font exists, Keft; and this was done at huge expense with government grants and is still not finished. No free Bohairic font exists. Indeed people are still messing around with non-unicode Coptic fonts. Likewise I don’t know of an online forum like Hugoye or Nascas for Coptic. And always, always, I get this impression of people looking down their noses.
But at least some people are fighting back. Dr Hany S. Takla of the St. Shenouda Center for Coptic Studies in Los Angeles is doing what he can. There’s a Facebook group, which he invited me to yesterday. This in turn tells me about resources that I wouldn’t otherwise know of. There’s the journal Coptica, for instance.
Mind you; Hugoye is also a journal, not just a forum. And the journal exists in free online form, as well as in printed form. How George Kiraz makes that work I do not know. But Coptica is only offline, sadly. I hope Dr. Takla will find a way to make this online.
But I recommend the facebook group. Dr Takla (who also looks in on Nascas) is plainly doing a huge work, and doing it more or less by himself. Well done, that man!
Eusebius update again
I’ve been too zonked from travel to do much today, but I’ve been working on the mysterious annotations in the manuscript. Thanks to a correspondent I have now worked out what these are. In fact they are all OK. Indeed one that provoked violent indignation seems to be a problem with the file, and nothing to do with the corrector. So that is good news, and I have sent the lot off to the translator for review.
One interesting thing I have discovered; you can’t persuade Microsoft Word to have its footnotes on one line. Each footnote has to be a new line. That does eat space!
Eusebius update
I had a review of the manuscript today with David G. D. Miller, the principal translator. This made me realise that there is more to do to it than I had realised! It’s largely small stuff, but it needs to be done.
A couple of issues have emerged. Firstly it looks as if some of the “corrections” of Greek that I had done are not right. This means going back and revisiting them all. Secondly a division is emerging in the footnotes between those which are concerned with the text and those concerned with other points. The idea is that the former will sit on the pages of the original language. This will involve some rework, unfortunately.
UPDATE: After some effort, it looks as if I was panicking unnecessarily. The corrections are nearly all just, and some of them highlight unresolved issues. Phew!
From my diary
I’ve been looking into another Syriac chronicle today, in between chores. This is an East Syriac chronicle, by an unnamed writer, written about 660 AD, and known as the Chronicle of Khuzistan. It covers the final years of the Sassanids and the first three decades of Islam. Interestingly there is an English translation by Sebastian Brock, made twenty years ago, but never published. The text was published in the CSCO 1 by Guidi, from a copy in the Vatican made in 1891. The original is a fourteenth century manuscript, then at the abbey of Rabban Hormizd in Alqosh. I wonder where it is now?
I’m rather pre-occupied with some earnings-related stuff at the moment, so there will be a few days silence here. Please don’t worry if I don’t get to your emails either for a few days. Sadly the task of earning a living has to take priority, and that means paperwork!
From my diary
The last couple of days have been very hot during the day — well over 30C in direct sun, and up to 29C in the shade. I’ve had to bring my laptop downstairs, because it is simply too hot up. I sat here last night until 2am, because it was so muggy last night. The roads were half empty of traffic, and some of those driving seemed to have had their brains addled, or were quarrelsome with the heat. The bright sun and clear sky is nice; but best seen from an air-conditioned office!
I’m sat here now, downstairs, at 22:13 with the air conditioner going because it is too hot otherwise. It’s been dark for over an hour, but it is still 20C out there. Last night I only got around 5 hours sleep, so I’m hoping tonight will be cooler! But it’s like a sauna upstairs. Hum.
All the same these nights are a splendid opportunity to get things done. After all, I don’t have to go to work at the moment, so it really doesn’t matter if I’m unfit to work on Monday. This is how I was able to translate John bar Penkaye.
I have a list of chores on a bit of paper that has been staring at me for a week, with forms to fill in and letters to send. So I’ve been attacking them. The sheer relief of getting rid of most of these is extraordinary! Mind you two of the utilities websites I went to, to book an appointment etc, are … offline! Yes, at the weekend, when everyone can do things, they’re down.
So … here I am again. Nothing I can do with the chores. So… what to do? What can I usefully do tonight that requires no real energy, no intelligent thought, and can be done while zonked out of my brain from lack of sleep? There must be something patristical that I can do.
Ah. I’ve thought of it. I was going to put online here a controversia from the elder Seneca, so people could see what they looked like. In a bit.
Eusebius update
I have now discovered a typesetting firm online who look like exactly the people I need to deal with. They understand the “Sources Chretiennes” layout, with facing Greek and translation. They understand oriental languages. They’re called Atelier Fluxus Virus. So … I have written to them this evening asking how to do business with them. Let’s hope they don’t mind hand-holding me a bit!
I’d been asking around, but not getting very far. Many thanks, tho, to “John” who suggested googling on “Greek typesetting”. That gave me the company above.
English translation of book 15 of John bar Penkaye now online
If we are going to get a BBC TV series on early Islam which mentions John bar Penkaye, there may be an opportunity to collect some interested people for Syriac studies. John bar Penkaye is a non-Islamic witness to the first century of Moslem rule in the middle east, you see. He was a Nestorian monk of that period.
For this reason (and because it was too hot to sleep last night!) I’ve taken Mingana’s translation into French of book 15 of the his history, the Rish Melle and run it across into English, with the aid of Google translator. I must say that the latter has improved yet again. Who would have thought that accurate translation was possible merely by an adaptation of a search engine to find the same words in two different languages?
Of course the translation has no scholarly value. The academic will go to Sebastian Brock’s version of about 66% of the book. But it might be useful to the general reader with no French and no access to Sebastian’s version. Dr Brock has been enormously generous with his time and efforts to promote access to Syriac literature, but his work suffers from the curse of the pre-internet age, that most of it is offline.
I’ve compared the result to Sebastian Brock’s translation, and it didn’t seem too unsound. I also smartened it up in a few places or added extra footnotes. The result is here:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/john_bar_penkaye_history_15_trans.htm
I’ve also put a link in the Wikipedia article on John bar Penkaye to it. I’ve also written a preface, aimed at that audience, which is here:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/john_bar_penkaye_history_00_eintro.htm
I’ve tried to presume no knowledge of Syriac studies. If anyone has suggestions for improvements to either, particularly to the intro that might help promote Syriac studies, do post them in the comments or email them to me.