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21 Jul 12 - 03:57 PM (#3379647) Subject: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: Dave the Gnome I have a project that I would really need to get underway. It will involve work on someones part and lots of trust between us but I think it will be worthwhile in the end. Amongst lots of religious texts and some Russian classics I have found my Granddads, hand-written in Russian, note pad. A Russian friend at work tells me it is poetry of a religious and secular nature. He cannot spare the time to translate it because poetry is notoriously difficult to translate successfully. My Granddad was Father Zachary Polakow, an academic writer and scholar who was persecuted for his views in Russia and eventually ended up as a Russian Orthodox priest in England. Which is, I guess, one of the reasons for me being here! I cannot afford professional translation services so that is why it would involve work on someones part but, from past experience, I trust Mudcat members and count many amongst my friends. I would rather it be out in the open here so that there is no question of copyright issues should anything come of it either financially or lyrically! Anyone out there fancy a try? I can scan in a couple of pages and email it. All I can offer is a share of the Kudos that comes out of it and, who knows, it may become a best seller :-) PM me or just drop a post here if you have an interest. Cheers Dave |
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21 Jul 12 - 05:38 PM (#3379681) Subject: RE: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: JohnInKansas I can't offer any direct help with translation, but can suggest that "handwritten notes" suggests a difficulty that my wife has encountered in genealogical research, with handwritten records. Variations in handwritten script require an "extra translation" on top of the conversion of the language. You might find translators more willing to work with the texts you have if you are able to type them as clear "printable" text. If would be assumed that you'd need to use a Cyrillic font(?), but the "characters" you need are generally available in recent word processors, and a "language" can be selected to simplify typing. Our experience (with German/Austrian records) suggests that you'll run into lots of "ambiguous" characters, but even partial transcriptions may be helpful. If there are significant ambiguities, the translator should obviously be provided with both your "typed" version and a scanned image of the original for each piece. Having "digital text," even if only fragments, might allow limited "machine translation" (e.g. Google translator?) that would be sufficient for you to guess at subject matter to select which things to work first, although results with this kind of conversion are extremely "variable." The author's avocation as a Russian Orthodox priest suggests that the things he wrote about might be of interest there. It would be a place to look for someone "interested enough" to look at the translation task, initially at least for a few pieces. If you have something of value/interest to their church, it shouldn't be necessary that you still have a church association there. If an accessible school (probably a university) teaches languages, that would be a good place to look for someone to help you. Depending on the complexity of the work, an instructor might be interested or might be willing to assign "pieces as homework" for students. If you are considering publication as a book collection, you eventually will probably need a single translator - to be credited as translator in the publication - in order to put things in consistent form, but that can be determined when you have enough done to approach a publisher. These observations are based on "some experience with book publishing" but virtually "no knowledge" of languages, but may get the thread started so you'll see better advice from others(?). John |
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21 Jul 12 - 05:50 PM (#3379688) Subject: RE: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: Georgiansilver Click on this link then 'Russian to English' Best wishes to you and hope you find what you want, Mike...... |
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21 Jul 12 - 06:46 PM (#3379701) Subject: RE: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: JohnInKansas The link looks like a pretty good translator, but the scans of handwritten stuff will probably still require retyping to "digital characters." It may be worth noting that some programs that include OCR (Optical Character Recognition) allow you to choose a language before converting the graphic scan to text. I would expect that if "Russian" was selected before running the OCR for conversion of a picture of Cyrillic text the conversion would be to Cyrillic characters - that could be translated from Russian to English by the "translator." A problem still is that OCR recognition of handwritten text in any alphabet/language is generally pretty marginal, although the programs are improved by quite a bit even in the past few years. Unfortunately, so far as I've found, the only way to assess whether it's worthwhile to get the OCR is to get it and try it out. Many scanners now come with a package of accessories that include OCR, but as with most "accessory bundles" packaged with hardware there's seldom enough documentation even to figure out which program came with which hardware. John |
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21 Jul 12 - 07:08 PM (#3379705) Subject: RE: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: Uncle_DaveO Are you looking for translation into poetic form? Or a prose translation? I'm assuming you aren't interested in mere transliteration. The three tasks have different levels of difficulty. Transliteration is probably the "easiest", but is likely to produce the far-and-away least useful result. If the task is to turn Russian poetry to English poetry, the general principle is that the translator-poet needs to be at least as good a poet in the target language as the author was in the source language, and ideally to have the sort of command of the poetry conventions in source language that the original poet had. That's a tough set of qualifications. Dave Oesterreich |
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21 Jul 12 - 07:45 PM (#3379711) Subject: RE: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: GUEST,Grishka You probably need more than one person for the various tasks: 1) transliterating the handwriting into legible Russian in modern spelling, 2) understanding the meaning exactly and reproducing it in English, 3) writing it down in good English. Often 1) is the most difficult task; for this you need a native speaker who has some experience with historic language, spelling, and handwriting. It would be a coincidence if that expert were also good at task 2 and 3. I had the same problem with my family heritage (just letters etc.). Although I have some elementary Russian, I heavily relied on several friends to decypher the old texts and documents. As JohnIK wrote, a search in the Russian Orthodox community may be the best idea. |
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22 Jul 12 - 12:17 AM (#3379756) Subject: RE: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: katlaughing I will ask my brother if he'd be interested in any of the steps lined out above. He graduated from the Army Language school in Monterey, CA and Russia was the language he learned. Went to West Germany and translated clandestine Russian broadcasts for monitoring during the Cold War, so he knows it pretty well. He recently was writing emails back on forth to someone in Russia who complimented him on his grasp of the language. Not sure if he'll have time, but I'll at least ask. He has the literary ability, also. Interesting project! |
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22 Jul 12 - 05:46 AM (#3379803) Subject: RE: BS: Russian Translation Anyone? From: Dave the Gnome I know you are all right - As my friend at work said poetry is very difficult in itself as you could loose either the meaning or the meter! He did say the handwriting was OK so the first task may not be as bad as it seems. I may have a try at getting on the 'puter myself or see if someone at home could at least try to get it digitised first. Thanks for your input so far at if anyome does come acrss someone who is willing to have a go then I can easily send them a page or two as an example. Cheers Dave |