Let's talk translations?

[takethewatch]

Does anyone have Opinions and/or Advice about translations to share? It's been a few years since my initial read-through of the Brick, and now that I have relapsed with a vengeance into this fandom, I am about due for another one (as soon as Life permits). I know not to read Denny--but I would love to see some discussion of the other translations out there (especially the new Donougher one) and their relative merits.

Comments

[sophia_sol]

I know that I went with Hapgood because it's what's on gutenberg, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not alone in that. I'm just used to gutenberg - I've never taken the time to get the hang of google books. You say there are multiple available on google books "if you know how to look" and I don't. I just tried actually, and it took me an embarrassingly long time even to just find the text to a copy of Wilbour!

Also you can copy-past text from the Hapgood in a way you can't as easily from the pdfs on google books, which makes things much more convenient for quoting bits of the brick in online discussions.

And also you can download the Hapgood from gutenberg in multiple convenient ebook formats.


I think it would be a really useful resource if people WERE to go through and ocr and manually edit the texts of other old translations! I would certainly volunteer to help if this project took off.

[melannen]

Yeah, we'd basically have to either get another one up on Gutenberg, or at least get a Gutenberg-quality file up on chanvrerie or somewhere (it looks like it's gotten more complicated to get stuff up on Gutenberg since last I checked...)

And it would have to be manually copyedited, but individual chapters aren't actually that long, so it seems doable if split up among even a few dozen people - the hard part would be quality control and coordinating.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, either would be good, though it would be best to get it on gutenberg where more people would be likely to see. I just checked the gutenberg site and it doesn't look overly complicated to me to get stuff up. According to the FAQ:

There are acres of words in this FAQ about that, but it all boils down to 4 simple steps:

Get an eligible book — pre-1923, or one of the exceptions. Pull it from your attic, borrow it from a library or a friend, buy it in your local bookstore, in a flea-market or on-line. We don't care which.
Send us a copy or the front and back of the title page so we can file proof of copyright clearance.
Copy the text from the book into a computer text file. We don't care whether you type it, scan it, voice-dictate it, or think of some totally new way to do it. Just get it into a file.
Send us the computer text file.
That's all there is to it!

Which seems fairly straightforward to me, unless I'm missing something.

It would totally be doable as a project! Possibly for quality control we'd want someone with a good eye to read through the whole thing once everyone was done, to make sure there aren't any glaring errors, which would likely be the most time-consuming part for any of the people participating. And by the way I call NOT IT for coordinating...!

[melannen]

Oooh, apparently I failed to find the FAQ this time. (link for future reference) Yeah, totally doable! Somebody should coordinate. Maybe someone who hates Hapgood more than me, though. :P

[sophia_sol]

Hah, yes. Paging tenlittlebullets....?

[kerrypolka]

I'd be up for helping with this!