Category: Information access

Undoubtedly the funniest reason to refuse work I ever saw

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Well the project to translate the untranslated passage of Chrysostom’s Adversus Judaeos has collapsed; and for such a curious reason!  The translator who offered himself turns out to be politically correct.  My experiences with Lebanese translators who expect to be paid for writing gibberish “translations” has led me, invariably, to ask to see a sample page or two first, and to explain why I ask.   The translator himself is not Lebanese, of course.  I received this delicious epistle in reply:

After serious consideration concerning your conditions I feel in the need to decline your offer. I have too much respect for people coming from any other country and from any background (religious included) to accept an offer from somebody commenting about “awkward experiences with people in Lebanon offering translations”. I find this regional specification rather politically incorrect. Saying that you have experienced problems with other scholars is enough to justify your conditions, without reference to their place of origin.

Can any of us imagine writing to someone who is offering money and lecturing him on how to write a private email?  But best to know now.

I’ll seek out another translator, then. 

Share

Untranslated portion of Chrysostom vs Jews – translator found

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Further to this post, a Chrysostom scholar has written to me and expressed interest in having a go at translating this “lost” portion of Oratio 2 against the Jews by John Chrysostom.  I’ve offered my usual terms, and he’s going to look at the Pradels text and (German) translation and see what he thinks.

My intention is to make the translation public domain.  Chrysostom’s sermons against the Jews are found in English in various places on the web (some of them polemical anti-Jewish sites).  My intention would be to try to get all these sites to add the extra material on the bottom of their version, and thereby ensure that the full text is the one available everywhere, rather than the mutilated version. 

In that way the damage would finally be healed, and become a historical footnote.  If I don’t do that, it is likely that the translation of the extra material will simply be forgotten, and the “vulgate” text of this oration (about 30% of the whole thing) will remain the standard text.

 

Share

The lost part of John Chrysostom’s second sermon against the Jews

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Another forgotten paper has emerged from my pile during scanning of articles, and reminds me that I need a translator; someone who can handle Chrysostom.

John Chrysostom preached eight sermons against the Jews during his time at Antioch.  The second of these is markedly shorter than the others; about 30% of the size.  This led researcher Wendy Pradels to wonder whether the text was damaged, and to search for manuscripts.  Her article on the search is here, and in 1999 her persistence was rewarded by the discovery of an unknown manuscript in Lesbos which contained the full version of the sermon. In 2001 she published the extra text, with a German translation, and I have just come across my copy of it.

But as far as I know, no English version of this exists.  I wonder whether a scholar would be interested in making me a translation!

Share

Eusebius, Eclogae Propheticae – Gaisford edition now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still going through piles of photocopies, turning them into PDF’s and throwing the paper copies out.  Occasionally I’m finding treasures.  I had forgotten that I paid the rare books room at Cambridge University Library 16.51 GBP — about $25 — to make a copy of the latest (1842!) edition of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Eclogae Propheticae. 

This curious work is three books of a now lost work, the General Elementary Introduction to Christianity, originally in 10 books.  The eclogae is books 6-9, found in a Vienna manuscript, and consisting mainly of extracts from the Septuagint Old Testament prophesying Christ, and for some reason always known as Eclogae Propheticae.  A few other scraps of the General Elementary Introduction exist; I suspect these will be fragments from catenas.

Gaisford’s edition is a little book, with a Latin introduction and no translation (drat the man).  I’ve created a PDF, and uploaded it to the web at Archive.org, here.  It’s about 28mb in size, although not searchable — I don’t have ancient Greek OCR capabilities! 

There has never been a translation of this work into English.  I am advised, tho, that such a translation would be very easy to make.  I know of at least one person working on Porphyry who has translated a large chunk of it for his own purposes, and may complete the work.  I seem to recall that someone else also has a projected translation.

If nothing emerges in a year or two, I may commission one.

Share

French National Library to work with Google books

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This story here.  Apparently the BNF have realised the futility of trying to build a rival system, and good for them.  This can only be good news for access to French language books, which the BNF has already had a good go at digitising.

Mind you, what it will mean is that lots of people in the USA will be able to look at books in French from France which French copyright laws prevent French people from seeing…

Share

Look again at Google Books; you will find more than you did last time

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On this hot summer’s day, I was idly searching in Google books for “library of the fathers” review “cyril of alexandria”, as I have done before in the hope of finding the review which caused Phillip Pusey to abandon work on the translation of the Commentary on John after only publishing one volume.

To my surprise, this time there was far more material.  We tend to forget that Google books is not a static collection, but is being continually enriched with more books and journals.  And although I have not yet found the article in question, I did find several reviews of Phillip Pusey’s work.  The Church Quarterly Review 23, p.32 contains a review of the second volume, published posthumously, which explains how Pusey tended to translate:

THE first-named of these volumes, which will apparently close the series inaugurated in 1838 under the name of ‘The Library of the Fathers,’ enjoys the advantage of a preface by Dr. Liddon, explaining the circumstances which have caused its appearance. In 1874 Mr. P. E. Pusey published the first volume of a translation of this Commentary, which, extending to S. John ix. 1, ‘was reviewed,’ we are told, ‘by an English critic in terms which rendered its humble and too self-distrusting author unwilling to resume it.’ We fear that these words may produce an impression which would hardly do justice to the case; the reader might infer that the critic was captious and inequitable. Now, we never met with the review in question ; but we are constrained to say, as we said on a former occasion (Church Quarterly Review, xv. 287), when reviewing another volume of Mr. Pusey’s translations from S. Cyril, that ‘ translation was not his forte’, and that when he attempted it, he seldom rose above the baldest ‘ construing,” very often so strangely worded as to associate his author’s name with mere grotesqueness. The fact is undeniable, however we may account for it; our own supposition is, that Mr. Pusey was debarred from success in this line by the very narrow range of literary interest to which he perforce restricted himself, when ‘ in his uniform filial love,’ in obedience to his father’s wish, he ‘ took as the central work of his life to make the text of S. Cyril’s works as exact as it could be made.”

The dreadful English of the first volume is indeed fully as bad as this gentle description suggests.

Share

British Library don’t know what “manuscript” means?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From the BL, a request for clarification of my FoI query, “how many images of manuscripts did you license for online use last year?” How did I define ‘manuscript’, they asked?  I responded as courteously as possible by referring them to their own catalogue of manuscripts.  I suspect that I am dealing with a department that doesn’t get asked much about these!  Still, they’re turning it around promptly which is good, and better than I expected.

Share

Russian site with loads of original language Greek patristic texts

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just discovered this link:

http://patrologia.narod.ru/

It includes masses of Greek, including Adamantius; plus the Syriac New Testament, and much else. Thanks to Evangelical Textual Criticism for this one.

Share

Placing stuff online – how much the British Library make from charging people for this

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My Freedom of Information request to the British Library got a reply a couple of days ago.  I asked:

I note that the BL charges a fee to websites that use digital images of pages from manuscripts from the BL collection.

Please would you let me know, for each of the past 5 years (either calendar or financial, whichever is more convenient):

How many requests were made for use of BL collection images of these items on third party websites.

How much income was received by the BL in consideration of the use of BL collection images of these items on third party websites.

Looking into the finances of one of our public research libraries can only be interesting and illuminating!  I got back an interesting reply that didn’t quite answer the question, as regards manuscripts, and instead gave figures for all items in the collection.  I think someone read my question a bit too quickly, perhaps!!  So I’ve asked them to review it.

They sent the reply in a non-searchable PDF, unfortunately.  (Curiously they stick a copyright notice on the information – habit, I suppose). Here’s the reply.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 – REQUEST 0929

We have considered your request and provide answers to your questions in turn below.

‘How much income was received by the BL in consideration of the use of BL collection images on third party websites.’

The revenue generated by charging for rights to reproduce images of items in the British Library collections for the previous five financial years (April to March) was as follows:

£                               2004/5     2005/6       2006/7         2007/8          2008/9
Total revenue    296,889      273,528     274,496        278,287         352,748

The number of requests for rights to reproduce images for which a charge was made was as follows:

  2004/5 2005/6 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9
Requests 1952 2090 2270 2770 1728

In certain cases, we waive the charge for rights for reproduction of images. Our records do no enable us to produce precise figures for this period but the approximate number of these is in the region of 800 per year.

This is very helpful, and quite interesting, all by itself.  Only a handful of requests each year, to one of the world’s richest libraries?  That feels wrong.  But who is doing the paying?  The sum is not really that high, for a major government institution, and probably can be broken down further.  We need more info, that’s for sure.

I will keep you updated!

Share