STEVE MOULDING Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Something I've been thinking about for some time now: a collaborative translation of the Corpus into English It's time to do something about it and today I started a wiki site to get things moving. http://grandduketranslation.pbwiki.com/ The site is hosted (for free) by pbwiki.com (amazingly simple to set up) and it works along the same lines as wikipedia. The basic idea is that I (or a small number of other interested contributors) will periodically post small pieces of the Corpus on the site. Anybody thereafter can get involved translating, as much or as little as they want to. You can also make corrections to prior translations. You have to do a simple registration but work can be anonymous thereafter if you want it to be. To be successful this project will rely heavily on our Russian-speaking friends to do the translating. I'm happy to do the original text input and organization (though if anybody else wants to help that would be great). I've posted a couple of introductory lines from the Poland Chapter of the Provincial Volume as a start. Feel free to start translating! Steve NOTE This project is not for profit and the translation is meant to be available for everybody. I believe the Corpus is public domain, but if anybody knows differently please let me know. Also, if the Corpus is in English already, please let me know. It would save everybody a lot of time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexbq2 Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Something I've been thinking about for some time now: a collaborative translation of the Corpus into English It's time to do something about it and today I started a wiki site to get things moving. http://grandduketranslation.pbwiki.com/ The site is hosted (for free) by pbwiki.com (amazingly simple to set up) and it works along the same lines as wikipedia. The basic idea is that I (or a small number of other interested contributors) will periodically post small pieces of the Corpus on the site. Anybody thereafter can get involved translating, as much or as little as they want to. You can also make corrections to prior translations. You have to do a simple registration but work can anonymous thereafter if you want it to be. To be successful this project will rely heavily on our Russian-speaking friends to do the translating. I'm happy to do the original text input and organization (though if anybody else wants to help that would be great). I've posted a couple of introductory lines from the Poland Chapter of the Provincial Volume as a start. Feel free to start translating! Steve NOTE This project is not for profit and the translation is meant to be available for everybody. I believe the Corpus is public domain, but if anybody knows differently please let me know. Also, if the Corpus is in English already, please let me know. It would save everybody a lot of time This undertaking would be much easier, if an electronic version in Russian were available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobh Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 This undertaking would be much easier, if an electronic version in Russian were available. Alex Basok had a CD version for sale (scanned images of the printed pages), price approx. $65 or $70 -- IIRC. It included previously unpublished plates of Peter I coinage. I can't imagine that the images could be subject to copyright laws, but I would not feel comfortable posting any of the data on the internet without getting prior approval from him. Maybe the job could be done in stages, posting ads for his web site on the Wiki site in exchange for the permission to use his scans? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RARENUM Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Something I've been thinking about for some time now: a collaborative translation of the Corpus into English It's time to do something about it and today I started a wiki site to get things moving. http://grandduketranslation.pbwiki.com/ The site is hosted (for free) by pbwiki.com (amazingly simple to set up) and it works along the same lines as wikipedia. The basic idea is that I (or a small number of other interested contributors) will periodically post small pieces of the Corpus on the site. Anybody thereafter can get involved translating, as much or as little as they want to. You can also make corrections to prior translations. You have to do a simple registration but work can anonymous thereafter if you want it to be. To be successful this project will rely heavily on our Russian-speaking friends to do the translating. I'm happy to do the original text input and organization (though if anybody else wants to help that would be great). I've posted a couple of introductory lines from the Poland Chapter of the Provincial Volume as a start. Feel free to start translating! Steve NOTE This project is not for profit and the translation is meant to be available for everybody. I believe the Corpus is public domain, but if anybody knows differently please let me know. Also, if the Corpus is in English already, please let me know. It would save everybody a lot of time Hi Steve, I have translation in English for Peter I part 1 in my library.Great Project. Rarenum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE MOULDING Posted January 20, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Alex Basok had a CD version for sale (scanned images of the printed pages), price approx. $65 or $70 -- IIRC. It included previously unpublished plates of Peter I coinage. I can't imagine that the images could be subject to copyright laws, but I would not feel comfortable posting any of the data on the internet without getting prior approval from him. Maybe the job could be done in stages, posting ads for his web site on the Wiki site in exchange for the permission to use his scans? Thanks for the suggestions. Actually I hadn't thought about needing to use Alex's CD. I had bought a copy from him a few years ago but more recently bought elsewhere all 11 volumes of the corpus in a beautiful extra large book format. I'm using those, no permission or prior approval from Alex needed. So far I'm typing text (I had to find an extended cyrillic font to cover the obsolete characters) though admittedly this is not very practical. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 Hi Steve,I have translation in English for Peter I part 1 in my library.Great Project. Rarenum I thought there were only plates for Peter I, no laws?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE MOULDING Posted January 21, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 First full page submitted! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RW Julian Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 I thought there were only plates for Peter I, no laws?! The Peter I corpus volume for 1682–1710 was published in 1914, just as World War I began. At about the same time the plates were printed for 1711-1718 but without accompanying text. Plates for 1719 were printed but not numbered. The Hermitage at one time had extra copies of the 1711–1719 plates and Dr. Spasskii donated a set to the Smithsonian. The Grand Duke planned to publish the laws in a separate volume but this did not happen. It is my understanding that the documents, as copied by researchers, are presently at the Hermitage. Some years ago an attempt was made to reprint the Peter I material. Anders Berglund translated the text from the first published volume and created his own text for 1711–1719. I do not exactly remember the details but for one reason or another the project could not be carried through. RWJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grivna1726 Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 Some years ago an attempt was made to reprint the Peter I material. Anders Berglund translatedthe text from the first published volume and created his own text for 1711–1719. I do not exactly remember the details but for one reason or another the project could not be carried through. RWJ I remember something about this from Ran Zander. I think it was mentioned in one of his write-ups for JRNS (or it might have been a private communication). I seem to remember that Francois Van Hoof was somehow involved, but it was a long time ago and my memory is not clear on the details, so I might easily be mistaken on that point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-kuna Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 I remember something about this from Ran Zander. I think it was mentioned in one of his write-ups for JRNS (or it might have been a private communication). I seem to remember that Francois Van Hoof was somehow involved, but it was a long time ago and my memory is not clear on the details, so I might easily be mistaken on that point. i know exactly where those paragraphs about english text are availble in JRNS, if an editor permits i will post it here immediately.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE MOULDING Posted January 21, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 Hi Steve,I have translation in English for Peter I part 1 in my library.Great Project. Rarenum Thank you! I hope you can contribute some translations to the Polish section when you have time! The first page is almost done (thanks to a kind volunteer), and I've posted another complete page today. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE MOULDING Posted January 22, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 I can now scan in an entire page of the Corpus, import it into MS Word, then paste into the translation wiki site. This will speed things up considerably, at least from the input side of things. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexbq2 Posted January 22, 2009 Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 I can now scan in an entire page of the Corpus, import it into MS Word, then paste into the translation wiki site.This will speed things up considerably, at least from the input side of things. Steve Great! That's what I was thinking of. It will require minor editing vs. full translation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE MOULDING Posted January 22, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 Great! That's what I was thinking of. It will require minor editing vs. full translation. How so Alex? I think we still need human translation yes? Unless you're suggesting feeding the text into a machine translator which would be an extremely rough approximation...I want to do much better. The scanning and cyrillic OCR means not having to type everything in by hand. I do appreciate the suggestions ; I still don't have the best answers yet and am discovering how to make this work as I go along (with helpful discussions online and offline with coinpeople friends). It's not going to be easy; far from it. Which might explain why it hasn't been done yet Best, Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexbq2 Posted January 22, 2009 Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 How so Alex? I think we still need human translation yes? Unless you're suggesting feeding the text into a machine translator which would be an extremely rough approximation...I want to do much better. The scanning and cyrillic OCR means not having to type everything in by hand. I do appreciate the suggestions ; I still don't have the best answers yet and am discovering how to make this work as I go along (with helpful discussions online and offline with coinpeople friends). It's not going to be easy; far from it. Which might explain why it hasn't been done yet Best, Steve I think that feeding the Russian text into the translator would provide positive results, of course a lot of proof reading and editing of the resulting text will be required, but I think it would greatly simplify the job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE MOULDING Posted January 22, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 I think that feeding the Russian text into the translator would provide positive results, of course a lot of proof reading and editing of the resulting text will be required, but I think it would greatly simplify the job. It would indeed be simpler, and to get the overall flavor may be OK. I've posted little pieces of the Corpus on this site in the past, for example when we've been discussing possible Sestroretsk 5K overstrikes. But in these cases our Russian speaking friends have provided a fast translation as part of the thread, and that's great, and we didn't have to go to a machine. My vision is a little different than simply providing a fast tool. I really would like to see what is a beautiful and invaluable piece of work translated into something almost as nice but equally invaluable. That said, there are several significant problems: Technical: My learned friends advise me that many of the letters, laws & decrees that are published in the Corpus are written in a highly formal bureaucratic Russian and that these have proved extremely difficult in the past to translate. What I hope is that through a collaborative effort, with enough people able to see and edit, we can work towards a decent translation, in much the same way that through collective knowledge the wikipedia encyclopedia is getting built. This is going to be hard enough with expert human input; I honestly don't think a machine will get it even close. Motivational: Another problem, and it's a real problem, is why would anybody get involved? Many Russian speakers will likely be happy to read the Corpus in Russian; where's the upside in devoting their valuable time to translating? Does this mean it has to be commercial (I'd rather not) or will it be left to the few bi-lingual scholars of the subject with the patience to work on something over several years? I'd rather it be collaborative; I think there'd be much to learn as we go through the different sections , and the Russian speakers might get to see sections they'd normally not come across (or perhaps have not even seen if they don't own a corpus). I'll see how this goes over the near term. Scope To do everything well would be a huge job. I'm not afraid of multi-year projects (my image archiving project has been running for 6 years now) but others may not have the patience. Well, that's my 20c. In the meantime, if you'd like to do a comparison I can feed some of the scanned text into your favorite machine translator and see what comes out. Let me know what to use and I can post the results. Best, Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gxseries Posted January 22, 2009 Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 From my experience, OCRs can be rather decent if the resolution is high enough, at least 300dpi. However, I'm afraid the old Cyrillic characters may not be picked up but I guess something can be worked out. Since I have a background in translating Japanese to English, translation unfortunately is not something everyone can do, even knowing either languages. Machines aren't going to take over the job any time soon. In this particular case, it would be best to find a Russian native speaker and try to translate with the best of what he's capable of. Ideally, there would be a translator checker that knows roughly both Russian and English and can check the script and passes it down to the editor. The editor will then try to make it sound as smooth as possible. At times where it's impossible to understand what is going on, the editor will then have to consult with the translator over those parts. I don't see how it's unfeasible given that there is no schedule to complete as well as a strong interest in Russian numismatics will keep this going for a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akdrv Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 I translated a few paragraphs. Will do more as time permits. Great project idea. I think Wiki is a perfect collaborative platform to do this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE MOULDING Posted January 23, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 I translated a few paragraphs. Will do more as time permits. Great project idea. I think Wiki is a perfect collaborative platform to do this. Thank you so much, both for your contributions and your comments! Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-kuna Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 I think that feeding the Russian text into the translator would provide positive results, of course a lot of proof reading and editing of the resulting text will be required, but I think it would greatly simplify the job. does everyone know what the <<abrocadabra>> means? - it is same word in english and russian, letter by letter. now, just wanted to share with everyone here the following: when i was helping to translate a first class article about copper piataks from russian to english into one of the JRNS, i put the whole text in to mashine and you guess what happened - <<abrocadabra>>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you can try too, but i had a bad experience. after all i concluded that it would be easy for me to transalte the text by myself rather use those kind of translate engines which are DO NOT KNOW - DO NOT RECOGNIZE - BUT MAKES <<ABROCADABRA>> with the words and the meaning of each sentece!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sometimes there is not meaning at all, no sense at all - i was loosing my mind and time with those engine translaters. thank you everyone for reading the above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-kuna Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 It would indeed be simpler, and to get the overall flavor may be OK. I've posted little pieces of the Corpus on this site in the past, for example when we've been discussing possible Sestroretsk 5K overstrikes. But in these cases our Russian speaking friends have provided a fast translation as part of the thread, and that's great, and we didn't have to go to a machine. My vision is a little different than simply providing a fast tool. I really would like to see what is a beautiful and invaluable piece of work translated into something almost as nice but equally invaluable. That said, there are several significant problems: Technical: My learned friends advise me that many of the letters, laws & decrees that are published in the Corpus are written in a highly formal bureaucratic Russian and that these have proved extremely difficult in the past to translate. What I hope is that through a collaborative effort, with enough people able to see and edit, we can work towards a decent translation, in much the same way that through collective knowledge the wikipedia encyclopedia is getting built. This is going to be hard enough with expert human input; I honestly don't think a machine will get it even close. Motivational: Another problem, and it's a real problem, is why would anybody get involved? Many Russian speakers will likely be happy to read the Corpus in Russian; where's the upside in devoting their valuable time to translating? Does this mean it has to be commercial (I'd rather not) or will it be left to the few bi-lingual scholars of the subject with the patience to work on something over several years? I'd rather it be collaborative; I think there'd be much to learn as we go through the different sections , and the Russian speakers might get to see sections they'd normally not come across (or perhaps have not even seen if they don't own a corpus). I'll see how this goes over the near term. Scope To do everything well would be a huge job. I'm not afraid of multi-year projects (my image archiving project has been running for 6 years now) but others may not have the patience. Well, that's my 20c. In the meantime, if you'd like to do a comparison I can feed some of the scanned text into your favorite machine translator and see what comes out. Let me know what to use and I can post the results. Best, Steve ******************************************************************************** *************** My learned friends advise me that many of the letters, laws & decrees that are published in the Corpus are written in a highly formal bureaucratic Russian and that these have proved extremely difficult in the past to translate. ******************************************************************************** *************** have you decided or anyone - will you keep the text translation close to its original formal bureaucratic style ? i already saw some translation attempts and there was in russian original <<бить монету>> and was translated to english as minted, than there was <<чеканить монету>>, still translated same to english as minted ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 thank you for abrakadabra. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 i already saw some translation attempts and there was in russian original <<бить монету>> and was translated to englishas minted, than there was <<чеканить монету>>, still translated same to english as minted ? Well, I do not think someone took some coins and beat those with a hummer. What do you think is a proper translation of : 1. бить монету -- 2. чеканить монету -- I will use your translation next time I attempt to translate those passages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexbq2 Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Well, I do not think someone took some coins and beat those with a hummer. What do you think is a proper translation of : 1. бить монету -- 2. чеканить монету -- I will use your translation next time I attempt to translate those passages. 1. бить монету -- Strike Coin 2. чеканить монету -- Mint Coin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-kuna Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Well, I do not think someone took some coins and beat those with a hummer. What do you think is a proper translation of : 1. бить монету -- 2. чеканить монету -- I will use your translation next time I attempt to translate those passages. that is what i am telling you (and SM) - are you gonna keep the old style, so use <<strike>> instead but what i was thinking for is that may be old british has some different word for it; like russian meaning <<бить монету>> could be named in old british differently, or using somekind of idiom, you know like russian say - do not hook the macarony on my ears - same idiom in english - don't pull my legs... can you see the difference - ears and legs but same meaning??? - that is what i am talking about... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.