Careless transcription of Latin

Dean J
Dean J Member Posts: 308 ✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

I am currently reading through Elliot's Horae Apocalytpicae, which I purchased as part of the Classic commentaries on Revelation collection. I have been very disappointed to see that barely a sentence of Latin has been copied without mistakes. In some cases, I can't figure out what the original might have been. I now fear for other books that contain a number of original source citations in other languages. Surely Logos could find a way to better transcribe these? Logos could, I'm sure, find people on these forums who know some Latin and who would be happy to do it in exchange for $15-$20 p/h worth of Logos credit (even if only applicable for out-of-print works which would then cost Logos nothing). 

Comments

  • Bruce Dunning
    Bruce Dunning MVP Posts: 11,161

    Dean053 said:

    I am currently reading through Elliot's Horae Apocalytpicae, which I purchased as part of the Classic commentaries on Revelation collection. I have been very disappointed to see that barely a sentence of Latin has been copied without mistakes. In some cases, I can't figure out what the original might have been. I now fear for other books that contain a number of original source citations in other languages. Surely Logos could find a way to better transcribe these? Logos could, I'm sure, find people on these forums who know some Latin and who would be happy to do it in exchange for $15-$20 p/h worth of Logos credit (even if only applicable for out-of-print works which would then cost Logos nothing). 

    Have you reported the errors you have seen or are there far too many? I would at least report the ones you have seen with a general comment at the end.

    Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    I just randomly checked 10 Latin quotations, and they seemed OK (I don't understand Latin, but I pasted them into Google translate, and they seemed to make sense).

    Could you post some links to some examples?

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Dean J
    Dean J Member Posts: 308 ✭✭

    No, unfortunately my reading was while offline. At first I thought it was just the Logos to pdf (for kindle) process, but I've picked up reading directly from Logos, and the errors are still there. Here is what I was reading yesterday, prompting me to post. I have put in bold the needed corrections just for this one reference in a footnote:

    Per idem ferè tempus (A.D. 650) quidam hæreticus, pulsus à partibus transmariuis [should be transmarinis], in Gallias venit; moxque se conferens ad civitatem quæ olim IIedua [should be Hedua] nunc autem Augustodunum vocatur, cæpit [should be coepit, not caepit] tàm cautè quàm fraudulenter sua nefanda dogmata prodere. Quod cùm in palatio ad aures Eligii Noviomensis Episcopi pervenisset, cœpit vigilanter cùm Audoeno et cæteris catholicis viris tractare quemadmodum hanc pestem palam omnibus manifestatam detegerent; [should be denegarent] nec destitit Episcopos commonere et optimates, quousque [should be quo usque] jussu Principis sacerdotale concilium apud urbem Aurelianensem [should be Aureliansem] congregaretur. Ubi, eo quem diximus hæretico in medium deducto, conabantur eum docti quique diversis modis interpellare; sed nullo poterant genere concludere: tantà quippe dicendi arte objectis quæstionibus occurrebat, ut ubi maximè putaretur constrictus teneri, [no comma in original] ibi, een [should be ceu] anguis lubricus quibusdam foraminibus dilapsus, [no comma in original] corum se fronti opponeret. Cùmque nullo modo à quoquam posset concludi aut superari, extitit quidam à nostris piâ Dei providentiâ doctissimus Episeopus [should be Episcopus], nomine Salvius, quiita [should be two words, qui ita] ei in omnibus obviavit, ut ingens eâ eaussâ [should be caussa] nostris fieret gaudium et spectaculum [should be expectatio]: omnes enim ejus versutias et artes, quas ille nune occulere, nune [should be nunc] etiam dissimulare conabatur, frequenti disputatione pala mfunditus [should be palam funditus] detexit: sicque adversus eum [should be cum] omnium episcoporum [original has Episcoporum] sententia prolata, et per singulas eivitates [should be civitates] super ejus nomine decretis constitutis, cùm eâ quæ par erat ignominiâ, et dedecore, â finibus Galliæ eliminatus est.” D’Aehery, ii. 88.—

    E. B. Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ or A Commentary on the Apocalypse, Critical and Historical, Volume 2, Fifth Edition. (London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1862), 227, n.4.

    If this level of carelessness was allowed to pass through here, it has likely done so elsewhere, which should be a concern to us here, and which should be brought to the level of Logos who would probably otherwise not be aware of it.

  • fgh
    fgh Member Posts: 8,948 ✭✭✭

    Dean053 said:

    I am currently reading through Elliot's Horae Apocalytpicae

    Sorry, but given the title of the thread, I couldn't help [:D] when I saw that.[:P]

    Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2

  • Dean J
    Dean J Member Posts: 308 ✭✭

    ha ha good one! don't get me to do the transcriptions!

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    Dean053 said:

    If this level of carelessness was allowed to pass through here, it has likely done so elsewhere, which should be a concern to us here, and which should be brought to the level of Logos who would probably otherwise not be aware of it.

    Thanks. That's obviously not acceptable. I re-checked several other footnotes in volume 3 (against the copy on archive.org), and found that there were mistakes there too, though not on that scale. I checked ten longish footnotes and found three errors.

    It would be worth contacting someone at Logos and finding out what went wrong. I'm not sure who to contact, though - I'm not sure who is still at text development any more.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Dean J
    Dean J Member Posts: 308 ✭✭

    It would be great if you could find someone to make aware of this.

  • fgh
    fgh Member Posts: 8,948 ✭✭✭

    The author seems to be Anglican, so you can post a link to this thread in the Anglican forum, which tends to be better monitored than this one.

    Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2

  • Kyle G. Anderson
    Kyle G. Anderson Member, Logos Employee Posts: 2,239

    Thank you for your report. We are looking into it at our end.