[Foundation-l] Wiki translations of Greek and Roman texts

Delirium delirium at hackish.org
Thu Oct 14 17:46:02 UTC 2004


Viktor Horvath wrote:

>Could it be possible to set up a Wiki containing some
>Latin/Greek/Arabian/whatever philosophy (or other content) whose copyright
>has expired for a long time - be it by typing in old editions or by taking
>over some Gutenberg content - and displaying it one paragraph per page,
>giving the viewer the possibility to translate it into his native language?
>I guess some specific features would be helpful, such as allowing two
>translations in the same language to coexist (call them "English version,
>showing John's translations where possible" and the same thing for Jim), as
>there will never be "the one correct version". In addition, it would be nice
>to create a bilingual PDF for printing.
>  
>
This sounds great to me.  Would this be acceptable at wikisource without 
starting a fully new project?  I know the original source texts would 
be, but are original translations okay, or is that project strictly for 
verbatim source texts?

A related project that's been mentioned on this list is support for 
annotations (a footnote-like system), which I think any translation 
project would need---there are often nuances and controversies in 
translation that can't be fully resolved in the text, but should be 
noted for those who are interested (and there are likely to be so many 
that they need to be noted as attachments to the text like footnotes, 
not scattered on the talk page).

-Mark




More information about the foundation-l mailing list