I’ve had an email from Evangelos Varthis, telling me about his project at Ionian University. It’s still very experimental, but there is some very interesting thinking going on here. Basically he’s making the Greek text of the PG available, in image, and in electronic text, plus a simple way to get an AI translation of it alongside.
Here’s what he says:
I am mainly involved in presenting information about PG Migne and I personally appreciate and understand the value of these texts….
Experimentally, I and others have uploaded a list of patristic texts from various sources, mainly to see how Artificial Intelligence translation can help.
The Greek texts have a decent translation into Greek (I understand Greek and English), although manual editing is required in various places for greater clarity. Here I would say that even human translated material has a degree of ambiguity.
If you have time, visit the following website, i would appreciate any feedback.
https://scholarios.graeca.org/pgworks/ also (select greek text and right click to translate)
https://scholarios.graeca.org/public/pgfront/index.html?vol= 1&page=0001
The first link takes you to a list of authors and works.
Clicking on the first of these gives a list of languages, and clicking English gives you this:
However I notice that the AI translation has omitted the title and first sentence, so perhaps a bug there. All the same, this works fine.
The second link takes you to a presentation of the volumes with parallel transcription, and again an AI translation option. This is potentially really useful. Unfortunately there is some work to do here: the only way to change page is to change the URL manually – not a problem – and right-clicking on the text brings up a menu, which, instead of calling the AI translation, prompts for the text to translate! I’m sure that this did work, but AI can be tricky like that, and changes what response it gives without warning.
All the same, this will be a very useful thing to have when they’ve got a bit further down the line with it. Well done guys!
Thanks for bringing this to attention. it’s a wonderful resource. I can definitely see myself keeping a window with the second tool always open.
“right-clicking on the text brings up a menu, which, instead of calling the AI translation, prompts for the text to translate!”: You need to first select the part of the text you want translated and then right-click. There’s actually a sign “for AI translation right-click on selected text.”
Minor quibbles about the Migne texts:
– Most of the editions used are from the first period (late 1850s and 60s) but some are copies of the ones reset after the 1868 fire, which are not as reliable, and sometimes change the page numbers. The standard quotation system is that of the first editions. There are enough good copies of these at Google Books.
– The scans used are not always the best available. For example, if you go to PG 99 around col. 466 you will see missing text next to the gutter; or in PG 75 page 1 you can see the operator’s hand caught in the scan, which is always so funny. Google has been silently improving many of their scans over the years, so it’s relatively easy to get much better images to work with.
But again, these are minor points that can be fixed, although curating the scans may be time-consuming. The fact remains that even at this early stage the project is already extremely useful, and has the most intuitive, no-nonsense interface you could wish for.
Ah thank you! I hadn’t picked up the need to select first! Other good points also!