Tag: From my diary

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Looking out of the office window at 4 minutes to 4pm.  Thick fog is gathering outside. 

It’s getting dark.  It’s Friday evening.  It’s foggy.  Soon the lorry drivers will pour out of goods’ yards onto the motorways and jack-knife their lorries across the main commuter routes, as is traditional under these conditions. 

Such conditions must have been more romantic in Victorian times.  

What?  Do you mean that the sinister doctor and the mysterious chinaman have removed the body to the lonely house on the moor?!

These days, they’d simply get stuck in traffic.  Fu Manchu never had to cope with speed cameras I’m sure.

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The art of cheating in American universities

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A curious article here via SmallDeadAnimals:

It turned out that my lazy, Xanax-snorting, Miller-swilling classmates were thrilled to pay me to write their papers. And I was thrilled to take their money. Imagine you are crumbling under the weight of university-issued parking tickets and self-doubt when a frat boy offers you cash to write about Plato. Doing that job was a no-brainer. Word of my services spread quickly, especially through the fraternities. Soon I was receiving calls from strangers who wanted to commission my work. I was a writer!

Nearly a decade later, students, not publishers, still come from everywhere to find me.

How accurate the story told, at length, is… well, who knows?

The wretched standard of education at Oxford is one I well remember.  The laziness of students is exceeded by the laziness of dons.  The latter, paid to teach, mostly do not bother.  Thus does education become corrupted.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

All the way through the Greek and Latin proof corrections now.  It was pretty important, this stage.  Some of the Latin text entered contained terrible typos.  Thankfully the translator picked them up.  Tired but feeling less like a worm under a stone than I did.

Next it will be the Coptic proof corrections.  I haven’t even opened the envelope yet.  (I’m afraid to, that’s why!)

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Busy.  I’m about half way through processing the Latin proof corrections into Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions.  I’ve also tentatively commissioned a translation of a few more of Isidore of Pelusium’s letters.  And I’m reading Mutschmann’s article on chapter divisions.

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Anyone got a PDF of W.G.Kummel, Introduction to the New Testament?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Someone, seemingly of no great honesty, has professed that a footnote somewhere in this book justifies a claim he is making online.  Does anyone have access to a PDF of it, so I can look? 

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A busy few minutes, dealing with the emails this morning!  I got a cold over the weekend which limited what I could do.

The first draft of the remainder of the Religious Dialogue at the court of the Sassanids has arrived and I have annotated it with suggestions.  We were translating this because it contains chunks of Philip of Side’s lost Christian History.  It also contains, I find, a version of the Testimonium Flavianum.  Apparently this is related to the version that appears in John Malalas (and isn’t it a nuisance that Malalas is not available online in English?)

I posted last week the first 14 letters of Isidore of Pelusium.  Over the weekend I asked David Miller, the translator of Eusebius, to review this.  His review came back very quickly, and I will pass it over to the translator, just as soon as I have converted the non-unicode Greek into something normal.  I always hated being “reviewed” myself; we’ll see how it goes.

Another chap wrote to me last week offering to do some work on commission.  I received his CV over the weekend which looks good, and I shall set him loose on some letters of Isidore as well.  He also does Syriac; I wonder whether there is something short and useful to do in that language.  I’d pretty much given up on finding Syriac translators.  There is always Bar Hebraeus’ Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, and heaven knows we need a translation of that.  But it would be a bit big to do in one go.  Maybe we might do a page or two.  But I’d prefer something small that can be done completely.

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Ernest Bramah’s “Kai Lung” stories

Posted on by Roger Pearse

If you have not read Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, by Ernest Bramah, do so.  Together with The Wallet of Kai Lung and Kai Lung unrolls his mat, it forms a little-known English classic.  The humorous stories are set in an imagined version of Imperial China where everyone talks in a kind of English Mandarin.  Kai Lung is a Chinese story-teller, and the books contain a series of stories and aphorisms.  It sounds dull; but in truth the books are enchanting. 

Thinking of atheism just now, I stumbled online across this quotation, which reminded me.

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in low-class teashops.

Office politics made me think of another:

It has been said there are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice on a dark night.

There are not nearly enough good, gentle, amusing books in the world.  Enjoy the Golden Hours.  And do buy it in paperback form, rather than read it online?

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I had another bash at applying the Eusebius proof corrections to the PDF.  I’m now up to p.274 of the PDF file, which means all the proof corrections to the Greek have been done (I think!).  But there will be some footnote renumbering, which is a pain.  This takes me up to around 30% of the Greek-Latin corrections.

Last night I wrote to everyone who had been doing stuff for me and whom I had not heard from for a while.  I got a note back from the chap who translated the 14 letters of Isidore I posted yesterday tells me that he has indeed started on the next lot, which should appear in a month.  He also reminds me that I had intended to get these reviewed by someone knowledgeable, which I must indeed do.  I must also ask him about his name appearing on the stuff.

The first draft of the translation of the remaining portion of the 6th century novel, the Religionsgesprach am Hof der Sassaniden has arrived.  There are quite a few queries on this.  I did some this evening, but it will have to wait until I have some time on Monday.  It looks very good, tho, and it is great to realise that we’re getting close to the end of this text.  I will make this translation public domain when it is done and paid for.  And that reminds me — Pauline Bringel, who edited the text recently, kindly sent me a PDF of her thesis.  I must remember to send her a copy of the translation!

Another email from a translator who was working on an Arabic text for me, published originally by Paul Sbath.  I hadn’t heard from him since February, thanks to some local difficulties.  But he’s still on the case and we’re likely to get this in a month.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s all a bit boring here at the moment.  I can’t pay any attention to antiquity because of the pressure of other dull but necessary things.  The days are short, the evenings dark, and all that jazz.

I don’t know how interesting people find the details of producing the Eusebius volume.  All the proof corrections are in, and I now need to spend some serious time processing them into the PDF so they can be sent to the typesetter. 

The bureaucracy with getting an “account” set up at print-on-demand firm Lightning Source grinds on — amusingly they demand an annual fee to do business with you, but I don’t think there is more for me to do.  But ad-hoc printing is not their thing.  I’ve had to do the proof copies via Lulu.

The cover design that I want is now in my mind, and will consist of a dark green cloth covered hardback with gold lettering; author, title, and, lower down, publisher logo.  The logo design people, Add Design of Leiston, have sent me some possible logos today, and they all look good and possible.  I’ve not told them yet, but the chances are good that they will be doing the cover setup and the website as well.

I’ve decided that the Syriac text needs to be reset in a larger font — it’s just too tiny as it stands, and I think this is partly the fault of the Meltho fonts themselves, which seem smaller than usual. 

On a different note someone asked me if I had a PDF of a manuscript of al-Makin.  I hunted around last night and found that I did.  But not enough time to do anything about it.

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Eusebius update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A long email from the translator about some issues with the Latin text.  One problem is that we are reprinting three different bits of Latin — one from a modern edition, with “young man” given as “iuuenis”, another from a 19th century edition where it is “iuvenis”, and another from a 16th century volume where it is also “iuvenis”.  The latter two are much smaller in length.  What do we do?

What I have decided to do is reprint the edition and not harmonise them.  There’s also other work on the Latin that needs doing, where we switched edition after the translation was complete.

I’m still feeling rather under the weather, but thankfully the translator is willing to take on some editorial duties and look after it. 

I’ve also started thinking about the cover again.  For the hardback the author and title, followed by a circular logo for the publisher, all in gold and on dark cloth, would seem possible.  If it works for Brepols it should work for me.  I’ve got together some examples, and I will send these over to a graphic design company.

The contracts to print the book have now been signed with Lightning Source.  So we are getting very close indeed here!

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