On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 01:20:29PM +1100, Kim Jones wrote:
>
>
> On 31/01/2009, at 3:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> >>
> >> I've also tried to dig through both Bruno's thesis with the help of
> >> google translator. It works for a while but soon one hits a wall
> >> with a
> >> difficult sentence/paragraph which is hard to understand even if it
> >> stands as the author inteded - and extra hard to understand if its
> >> meaning is corrupted by the translation.
> >>
> >> Bruno, I'd love to read your thesis in english, but I fully
> >> understand
> >> how hard it must be to get a good translation that you would be happy
> >> with. At the end, it might be easier to start from scratch, take the
> >> essential from both thesis, update a little bit and write a book in
> >> english on your own directly. Is that an option for you?
> >
>
> Bruno reads beautifully in French.
>
> I have offered to translate some of his stuff - the Brussels thesis is
> a wonderful read in French, I can't really understand the stuff about
> the construction of the computer because I have no background in
> computer science, but I can translate all the text into good,
> idiomatic English if I could generate some little income in the
> process. He has said "The road to hell is paved with the best of
> intentions" to me in the past, and I agree with him on that, also that
> publishing deals will benefit the publisher, not the author, but there
> are many people (me included) who love his stuff now and wish it could
> be presented to a wider audience.
>
> Failing that, a few of you might have to learn French, which would
> benefit your brain cells anyway. French is just English pronounced
> wrongly anyway ;-)
>
> K
>
A couple of years ago, I made a similar offer to Bruno. I even offered
to do it for free, although being paid for something does have the
remarkable affect of raising the priority of the task. There is always
the danger that some project's priority becomes too low that it is
never completed :). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending
on your point of view), I am not, at present, in a situation of being
able to accept payment for this.
At the time I was thinking of doing the Lille thesis, but since then I
would conclude it is better to do the Brussels thesis. I have not read
the Brussels thesis - translating it would help me focus on actually
reading an understanding it, something I'd like to do anyway.
I would be more than happy to collaborate on this. More hands make
light work! I have been doing translations of technical documents from
poorly structured English into idiomatic English, usually as "first
reader", with someone else being "second reader" who ensures the
grammer, spelling and other conventions are top-notch. As first
reader, it is more about making sense out of the writing.
Before starting though, I would insist on getting the original LaTeX
sources from Bruno - cropping out text and images from PDF documents
is harder work and less reliable that working with the original.
As for publishers profiting from this, I suspect it is not a work that
either author or publisher will make much money from. The translation
work will only be a labour of love by those involved.
Cheers
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpcoder.domain.name.hidden
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Sat Jan 31 2009 - 22:59:05 PST