Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
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…
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.
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.
I’ve just discovered this link:
It includes masses of Greek, including Adamantius; plus the Syriac New Testament, and much else. Thanks to Evangelical Textual Criticism for this one.
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!
The volume of indexes of the Revue de l’Orient Chrétien has now appeared online here. Thanks to Albocicade for the tip.
I’d like to highlight that an out-of-copyright translation of the Pandects, otherwise known as the Digest of Roman Law by Justinian, is actually online here as part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, under the misleading title of “The Civil Law”. Few people seem to know about this.
I thought that I would look at the comments on the Lex Cornelia, in 48.8, which I was discussing earlier in connection with legislation against magic. The law is mainly concerned with assassination and poisonings, and so are the comments. But there were clearly further provisions:
4. Ulpianus, On the Duties of Proconsul, Book VII. …
(2) The Divine Hadrian also stated the following in a Rescript: “It is forbidden by the Imperial Constitutions that eunuchs should be made, and they provide that persons who are convicted of this crime are liable to the penalty of the Cornelian Law, and that their property shall with good reason be confiscated by the Treasury.
“But with reference to slaves who have made eunuchs, they should be punished capitally, and those who are liable to this public crime and do not appear, shall, even when absent, be sentenced under the Cornelian Law. It is clear that if persons who have suffered this injury demand justice, the Governor of the province should hear those who have lost their virility; for no one has a right to castrate a freeman or a slave, either against his consent or with it, and no one can voluntarily offer himself to be castrated. If anyone should violate my Edict, the physician who performed the operation shall be punished with death, as well as anyone who willingly offered himself for emasculation.”
All this is interesting, considering that the priests of the state cult of Magna Mater (Cybele) were eunuchs!
A further interesting provision appears further down:
11. Modestinus, Rules, Book VI.
By a Rescript of the Divine Pius, Jews are permitted to circumcise only their own children, and anyone who performs this operation upon persons of a different religion will incur the penalty for castration.
This rescript of Antoninus Pius is second century, so cannot relate to Paul and Christianity; but if a similar attitude was around, it may explain why circumcision was not favoured by gentile converts.
Finally we get to something related to magic:
By a decree of the Senate it is ordered that anyone who offers sacrifices for the purpose of causing misfortune shall be subjected to the penalty of this law.
But the whole discussion relates to murder, rather than magic; clearly the latter was a minority concern.
Searching further for comments by Ulpian, I find this: 2. Ulpianus, On the Duties of Proconsul, Book VII. This is in 48.22, concerning associations, but again may relate to Christians.
Anyone who becomes a member of an unlawful association is liable to the same penalty to which those are subject who have been convicted of having seized public places or temples by means of armed men.
Kristian Heal has announced 35 additions to the Syriac books online here. Nothing wildly exciting, but all very useful, solid stuff!
It’s hot and humid here; so much so, that I can’t think straight. So I’ve been looking at the piles of photocopied articles and running them through my scanner and throwing away the photocopy. That’s a mindless activity I can do.
Not sure I’m quite there yet, tho. The PDF’s are OK, but they aren’t OCR’d. The scanner software has OCR, but it’s not good enough. Nor is the built-in OCR in Acrobat. The best still seems to be Finereader 9; but the PDF’s don’t go through FR9 unchanged. The images can look strange.
Not sure what to do about that. But I am gradually freeing up storage space.
James Snapp Jr. has kindly run the old French translation of Jerome’s Letter to Hedibia (ep. 130) through Google translate, smartened it up a bit, and made it freely available in the public domain. It’s here. Many thanks, James!
As machine translators improve, there will be real public benefit in efforts like this. Yes, we should translate from the original. But the fact is that vast amounts of stuff exists in French which few anglophones can read, and which won’t get a translation directly. Particularly for amateurs and enthusiasts, making a translation and placing it online really increases public interest in texts.