When I first encountered the Italian translation by Federica Ciccolella of the letters of the sixth century sophist Procopius of Gaza, it seemed to me that it would be useful to simply run this through Google Translate, plus some AI translator, combine the two, and get a rough English version. It wouldn’t be an academic translation, but it ought to be useful enough to stir up interest in the text in the anglophone world.
Unfortunately I’ve gradually got more and more bogged down. As I worked, I began to feel the need for the Greek text, which I therefore obtained; and also an AI translation of that for orientation purposes. Comparing this to the Italian indicated that the Greek ought to be consulted rather often. Gradually the scope widened from the original, limited objective. Really, it would have been better to start with the Greek altogether. Instead I find myself comparing this output with that output and, inevitably, being drawn to whatever version is clearer, better English, punchier. Which is not at all necessarily what Procopius wrote.
Worse yet, the memory loss that goes with getting older means that I have repeatedly lost my place and lost track of what I have or have not done. I now have a large directory full of drafts, at various stages, with no clear idea of what outputs each drew upon, or the extent of my own interventions. Being distracted by family commitments, and obliged to stop work for a week or two at various points, has not helped at all. I’ve burned much more time than I ever intended on this marginal task.
What to do?
I think that the original objective was undoubtedly correct, and it is my own enthusiasm that has led me astray. I think that the best thing to do is to return to that, and just ignore the Greek materials wherever I have not already done some work with them. Likewise to prefer the Google Translate to the AI. After all, the output from this task does not pretend to be a translation: only something to aid the reader to work with the text. It’s bound to be a hotch-potch, but still better than the big fat nothing that we have at the moment. But it still makes me wince.
What I must learn from this is the importance of controlling the scope of what I do. Also I need to realise that these days I may well lose track of things in a long project. I need to document what each portion of the text actually is, as I go. This was never a problem in the past, when I did real translations with a clearer focus; but I think my original approach, intending something quick, is the reason why I got into difficulties.
So for good or ill, I will stop. I will use whatever I have already worked up, in whatever state it is. I will add the minimal footnotes that I intended to add. And I will throw the result over the wall, with a note explaining what it is. The result should still be helpful to an English reader with little or no Italian, trying to get to grips with Dr Ciccolella’s work.
But it is an uncomfortable feeling, knowing that the result is not what I intended, may contain AI errors, and at bottom is misconceived. All the same, I cannot face discarding my work and starting again, so I will just have to live with it. The alternative seems to be to simply abandon the project.
It’s okay to realize you bit off more than you could chew.
Heh, this is why professors have grad students! To make them do the grunt work!
Almost forgot – jennica.github.io has an index of ante-Nicene Fathers to Bible passages.
I have not really looked at it yet, but it is a side project of the famous DataRepublican (Small r), who does a lot of US data analysis of where political money goes. As a hobby.
So I don’t know what her datasets on this thing are, but it sounds fun.
Okay, it is a visualization of how early Fathers used the NT. (Which avoids a lot of problems defining the Canon, and narrows down the problem nicely.)
Yes! A lot of this is exactly what you’d get a grad student to do, and he’d learn a lot doing it. But I shall have to backpedal, I think.
The https://jennica.github.io sounds interesting indeed. Will look! Thank you!
I’m going through a similar problem trying to write a USNI Proceedings article on zirconium and hafnium development in the 50s for nuclear power. I even have a so so chemical and nuclear and naval background. It can be kind of a rathole though to go down actually finding out the chemical processes. And anything I write will be simplified and summarized and dummied down. But I still find myself wanting to completely understand it prior to dummying down. Aargh.
No Greek though!
Regarding your problem, maybe think of it as a phased approach. Do the simple get it all in English asap. But allow yourself the possibility of coming back later and writing some other versions. Like the direct from Greek or a very literal version versus a very readable one. You don’t even have to ever do those versions. But allow yourself the mental freedom that you might. So you don’t feel bad about the crude translation.
Also, I would think the crude translation still serves a lot of value. Can extract what the major themes were. Percent of different topics. And some idea of the authors prejudices. Even if a later better translation changes that slightly, better to have a baseline.
Hah! These are both good thoughts – thank you! Yes, I certainly think that something is better than nothing. But the lure of the rabbit hole is strong!