Dictionaries as Translations

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Margaret Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Ancient Greek

Any reading of a Greek text is an act of translation. However, it is heavily mediated by those previous dialogues represented by the tools of scholarship, which may be regarded as a kind of secondary speech community for a language no longer spoken. Foremost among these tools for an Anglophone scholar has been Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon. The conversation in which one engages in consulting its glosses is at the very least three-way, involving not only ancient Greek and one’s own ‘mother tongue’, but also the English of Liddell and Scott. This chapter seeks to bring into sharper focus the vocabulary of the first edition’s glosses—a task rendered urgent not only by the passage of time but also by the fact that the editors had an axe to grind in selecting it.

Northern perspectives on language and society in India

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-45
Author(s):  
Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi ◽  
S. Imtiaz Hasnain
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Family ◽  
Language Practices ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
British Colonial

This chapter describes Northern attempts to fathom the relation between language and society in India / south Asia and Northern representations of it. We examine the nature of two such interventions: British colonial scholarship and American scholarship in the early years of Indian independence. We demonstrate that the methods and tools (including philology and ethnology) used by both these institutions to approach language and society relied on assumptions of homogeneity and unitarianism. We critique conceptual categories such as language, language family, dialect, vernacular, mother tongue, and speech community, which emerged from these interventions, and suggest that these were at variance with the indigenous social and language practices in India. In conclusion, we gauge the long-lasting impact of northern scholarship on present-day sociolinguistic research and practice in India.

scholarly journals The Vitality of Kabiye in Togo

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Komlan Essowe Essizewa
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Speech Community

In Togo, speakers of Kabiye have been in contact with the speakers of Ewe for several decades due to migration. As a result of this language contact, many members of the Kabiye speech community have become bilingual in Kabiye and Ewe. There have been a number of claims that Kabiye “est une langue en péril” (Aritiba 1993: 11). These claims have been based mainly on the observation of Kabiye speakers in Lomé and other major cities, where younger speakers seem to be losing their mother tongue to the benefit of Ewe. However, the extent of the loss of Kabiye is not well known because no extensive sociolinguistic study has been carried out among Kabiye speakers in these areas, and more specifically, in major Kabiye-speaking areas. The current study which has been carried out in Kara, the major Kabiye-speaking city and Awidina, a Kabiye village of the prefecture of Kara, fills the gap. The paper examines Kabiye speakers' reports of patterns of language use in these areas of the Kabiye community.

scholarly journals Ancient Greek text concealed on the back of unrolled papyrus revealed through shortwave-infrared hyperspectral imaging

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. eaav8936 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Tournié ◽  
K. Fleischer ◽  
I. Bukreeva ◽  
F. Palermo ◽  
M. Perino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hyperspectral Imaging ◽  
Multispectral Imaging ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Substantial Impact ◽  
Text Reconstruction ◽  
Shortwave Infrared ◽  
The Way

Only a few Herculaneum rolls exhibit writing on their reverse side. Since unrolled papyri are permanently glued to paperboard, so far, this fact was known to us only from 18th-century drawings. The application of shortwave-infrared (SWIR; 1000-2500 nm) hyperspectral imaging (HSI) to one of them (PHerc. 1691/1021) has revealed portions of Greek text hidden on the back more than 220 years after their first discovery, making it possible to recover this primary source for the ongoing new edition of this precious book. SWIR HSI has produced better contrast and legibility even on the extensive text preserved on the front compared to former imaging of Herculaneum papyri at 950 nm (improperly called multispectral imaging), with a substantial impact on the text reconstruction. These promising results confirm the importance of advanced techniques applied to ancient carbonized papyri and open the way to a better investigation of hundreds of other such papyri.

Hippocrates’ Oath

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.A. Cavanaugh
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ancient Greek

Chapter 2 (Hippocrates’ Oath) begins by extensively examining the grounds for attributing the Oath to Hippocrates, finding them reasonable. It then contextualizes, articulates, and explains the Oath, line by line. It presents the Oath within the ancient Greek custom of oath-taking, beginning with the first aspect of the Oath, the gods and goddesses by whom the juror swears. It then explains the contract incorporated within the Oath (which concerns the novel teaching of the medical art to unrelated males), presenting the motivations for and implications of Hippocrates’ extending medical education beyond the traditional boundary of physician-father educating son. Chapter 2 then proceeds to the oath-proper (which deals with a physician’s interactions with patients). In particular, closely following and explicating the Greek text, it shows that the prohibition of giving a deadly drug certainly concerns the giving of such a drug to the doctor’s patient (in contrast to alternative interpretations).

scholarly journals Ancient World of the Poet and Performance in Translations by Ants Oras

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-101
Author(s):  
Janika Päll
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Homeric Hymns ◽  
Performance Context ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Greek Hymns ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Third Person

This paper studies the means by which Ants Oras, scholar and professor of English and world literature, literary critic and translator, recreates the poetic space of ancient Greek hymns in his translations. The paper analyses his use of deictics (local, personal and temporal) in his translations of three Homeric Hymns: the 1st part of Hymn No. 3, to Delian Apollo, the Hymn No. 19, to Pan, and especially Hymn No 5 to Aphrodite. The special focus is on the initial and final parts of the hymns, where the Greek text reflects performance context, whereas Oras presents the poems in a more general, hymnal setting, leaving out the references which reveal the function of these hymns as epic prooemium.The analysis of the deictics within the Hymn to Aphrodite reveals that Oras does not adhere strictly to the third person viewpoint of the narrator (as opposed to first person in direct speeches of the characters), but enlivens his narration by frequent deictics which refer to narrator’s viewpoint, the poet’s ‘I’, or ‘here’ and ‘now’. This can only be occasionally explained with metrical reasons (preference to use monosyllabic deictics). This pattern of enlivening is in accordance to other practices, used by Oras in these translations: frequent personification of impersonalia (flight, mind) and multiplication of actors (objects of action becoming subjects, passive constructions turned active, and so on).

Language

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-43
Author(s):  
Martin Hinterberger
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Linguistic Rules ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Contemporary Context

Byzantine Greek was a highly developed and artful language with close ties both to the living language of the time and to a centuries-old literary heritage. Like all humans, the Byzantines grew up with their mother tongue; for those of Greek-speaking background and in Greek-speaking contexts, this was the spoken medieval Greek. Those who had the privilege to obtain education adopted—to various degrees—linguistic elements of older stages of the Greek language in order to compose their texts. Many of these older linguistic elements were used in a seemingly “arbitrary” way when compared to the linguistic rules of ancient Greek. Viewed in their contemporary context, however, these elements were creatively incorporated into a linguistic system which was essentially based on the contemporary language and was consistent in itself. The creative blend of traditional and modern features—though not readily accessible to the modern reader—and the tension between them left ample space for personal choices. This is precisely what makes the language of Byzantine literature a particularly exciting topic.

How to stay in the loop. A think-aloud study on dictionary use by excellent secondary-school students of Ancient Greek.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël Bartelds
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Text Comprehension ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Think Aloud ◽  
Loop Model ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
School Students ◽  
Dictionary Use

Abstract Dictionary use in secondary-school classics education in the Netherlands is problematic and an important cause of poor translations and text comprehension. Research on the topic is scarce and dictionary training plays a marginal role in the classics teaching practice. This explorative, qualitative think-aloud study examines which dictionary activities lead to success. We observed excellent secondary-school students while they were translating an Ancient Greek text. A feedback loop model, characterised as a slow process of constant verification, is used to analyse their dictionary behaviour. The findings show that successful dictionary activities depend on moving back and forth between text and dictionary, while the students reduce the cognitive load by activating schemata. Performing informed searches and using their fingers or the ribbon bookmark facilitate this process. In addition, closely monitoring the process with a critical mind, and linguistic reflection using appropriate metalanguage seem crucial.

scholarly journals COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS OF DECIPHERING THE MIDDLE TEXT ON THE ROSETTA STONE

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tome Boševski ◽  
Aristotel Tentov
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Rosetta Stone ◽  
State Official ◽  
Different Order

A b s t r a c t: In this text we present comparative analisys of the words and the expressions obtained after reading of complete middle text on the Rosetta Stone [15], by implementing our origtinal methodology presented in [12]. We have identified over 420 different words and expressions which preserve their meaning in contemporary Macedonian language and its dialects, but also they keep their meaning in archaic or contemporary in other Slavic languages. Identification and analysis of sentences and their structure will be subject of further researh. Going further in depth with analysis and comparing our reading results of the middle text on the Rosetta Stone, [15], with well known previous results of reading so called ancient Greek text, presented in [4], [5], [6], and [9], one can easily conclude that two texts, so called demotic text, and so called ancient Greek text are identical only by their content of the pharaoh’s orders. By all means, these two texts have different sentences structures, and different order of words within it. This fact is very logic and obvious in all cases where we compare two identical texts written in two different languages, and it is valid even today. Based on our research we can further improve this conclusion in the direction that the pharaoh’s decree on the middle text is written on the language of the Ancient Macedonians, with the script (signs) of the living masters in that period of Ancient Egypt. These language and script were state official language and official script in year 196 BC, after more than 100 years of the rulling of Ptolemaic Dynasty over Ancient Egypt. The language that we identified on the middle text on the Rosetta Stone definitely poses characteristics of a Slavic language. Many words that we identified in the middle text still exist in modern Slavic languages, or in their archaic forms, in respective Slavic language. Respectively, in lexical sense, we can identify that this language has very strong Slavic characteristics. This becomes more obvius after careful reading of presented multi-language dictionary.

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