Wednesday 15 February 2012

Project Status

Friends - where am I?  It has been over a month since I reported in on the big project: to produce the book that I wanted to have when I began learning the Hebrew of the Psalms. The project is continuing. I am working towards a book in shades of grey instead of colour. 450-500 pages is too much for colour printing.  So I have changed the way I display tables of keywords and added borders to allow easier perception on the vertical dimension of the apparatus.

Book 3 is submitted to one Hebrew academic expert who has already been a great help. Book 2 is submitted to another with a ready-red-pencil. I will be submitting the other books to some more of my PhD friends, but those who have volunteered are first philosophers and discourse analysts. I am short of Hebrew readers. Any of you academics who would like to may volunteer to review a draft of Book 4 or Book 5 (or everything). Book 1 is under the editing eye of my wife. She didn't exactly say she was enjoying it - but her criticism of gloss and grammar is important. Over the next 6 months, she plans to do 10 psalms a week - that's 260 altogether :).

I am targeting a publication date of March 2013, ready for a semi-planned trip - who knows with a printer in every location for instant book production.

Volunteer readers - you will enjoy the reading - guaranteed. Because the Hebrew and English are cheek by jowl and the apparatus is so revealing of the text, the units are really fun to look at. I have been reading other translations that do not have the Hebrew beside them. There is no comparison. For a close reading, the di-glot is a much happier experience, even if there is a mistake in form or judgment in the translation.

Here's why I need help:

  1. I am still only six years old 
  2. The notes need purging of my subjective comments (sometimes)
  3. Notes and translation were done over a five year period. Bayard's virtual library becomes a factor in my own memory. Sometimes the notes reflect an earlier stage of the translation.
  4. My translations contain blunders worth finding even for the humour. Bob - you can't say it that way!
I am not reading as much or blogging as much these days. I am experimenting with page layout - but last night at Bible study, I noted that my Hebrew reading is not as awkward as it was 6 months ago. After a while, maybe it improves by itself.

I am maintaining the text in database and private blog, thence to Word and PDF one psalm at a time. It's a juggling act, but the control over the changes that is possible with the database is a vital ingredient in staying sane.


3 comments:

  1. Be careful about how much work you put into page layout. When the manuscript hits the desktop publishing software, a lot of this will have to be revisited. Stick to getting the words/characters that you want, and save the page-layout stuff for a later phase.

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  2. Thanks for the warning - I am currently having great difficulty with Word 2010 - very slow - and I have tried to disable everything. Don't know what it is. And computers and networks have been failing on me all week! Very frustrating. Word is being non responsive after almost every keystroke. White screens and then after 20 seconds it returns control to the user - as I type this note, my last change has given me 6 blank screens.

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  3. My complain must have hit home - Word after being shut down is now behaving briskly, as briskly as it has for the last few months.

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