Hello all.
As many of you know, with the advancement of AI comes the possibility to reasonably translate Latin (though not with the expertise of human skill.) As such, I have begun to take a collection of transcriptions of the complete Patrologia Latina, which can be found here, and formatted them and "chunked" them for automated API translation. Then I have tried to preserve the headings as found in the original transcriptions. In this edition, the Latin is on top, in italics, and the English is below, in regular type. The 000. will denote the title the Headings are based on, and the subsequent 001., 002., 003., ect. denote the "chunks" that were made to be translate each section. They are not a part of the original text, but a necessary by-product of automated translation. The numbers in red = Latin, the numbers in blue = English. The unfortunate part of automation, is that some "chunks" do not translate, though they are usually minute compared to the overall work. The only altering of the original transcription that was done, was to remove the many inner-text notes, that were included in brackets, i.e. […..], and sometimes [….[….]…], as these were not conducive to auto-translation. This is because it makes the AI attempt to look around those notes. Many, if not most were references to other other works. Also, in the AI translation, sometimes notes in parenthesis do not carry over. It is simply a part of the auto-translation process, and at 221 volumes, it is very unlikely anybody, anytime soon is going to go through and correct every iota of this text. Lastly, many of the works in each volume are under a "Heading 4" so that there is, in the original transcripts, a long line of markers with that heading. As such, Logos will automatically create a Heading 3 at random for these to fall under when the PB is compiled. I don't see how this can be avoided at the moment.
This is a "test" module dispersed now to the community, for commenting or to see if there may be a way it can improve. At 221 volumes, it will probably still be another month before it is all potentially translated, even with 24hr API. And that too is relative to what my budget allows.
Though I am a Protestant, and associate with the Reformed tradition, the Patrologia Latina is heralded as one of the best collections of the Latin Fathers. So in the spirit of research, I consider it a blessing that something like this is now possible. After all of these volumes are translated, L.W. I will post the entire collection in two phases. The first phase/version will be, "as they are" meaning, the collection without going into all 221 volumes and translating the sections the API missed. Then L.W. a phase/version 2, when I have been able to in my own time, go through each volume and make sure all sections have been translated.
While the translation may seem woody at times, it was suggested that the best bet for accuracy was to prompt a strict literal translation, as opposed to trying to have AI make it more pleasantly readable, and do so by sacrificing accuracy.
All in all, I think this will be a blessing to the church, for any tradition, though some of us might not agree with what is said, while others will; there is still much to be gleaned by the texts contained herein. Hope this blesses someone, and if you could, please pray that the Lord would allow this project to be seen through. G.B.
The file of the Pat_Lat_test_Vol.1-5 can be found HERE. Please tell me what you think.
For His glory, and our good.
D.J.
