Toto wrote:That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.
I could do a little.
I appreciate the interest Toto!
This is my third attempt to add something to this thread, each previous attempt dissipating somewhere in the haze (in other wise, "situation norble").
Basically, I am interested in anyone who is good at catching little errors. I scanned the Latin text of both volumes of W. Wigan Harvey's
SANCTI IRENAEI EPISCOPI LUGDUNENSIS Libros quinque adversus Haereses (1857) using ABBYY version 11.
While it is supposed to be able to automatically read Latin and has built-in dictionary support, it did not like the old fashioned typeface (confuses "a" "e" and "s" a lot), does not read ligatures correctly at all. It is even worse with Greek (at best it can scan the kind of modern literary Greek that you might read in newspapers), which can recognize only two accents and no breathing marks at all.
We can ignore the scattered Greek fragments from Hippolytus, Epiphanius and others because these have already been scanned by overly zealous eastern orthodox (who care everything about Greek authors but nothing about the Latin translation of a "Greek" author).
Thank god we are only dealing with the Latin, which most all English readers can at least sound off. Unfortunately, Catholic zealots have apparently not deemed the surviving Latin translation (the only one preserving the vast bulk of the work) worthy of digitizing - It had not been translated into the type of Latin that Tertullian, Jerome or Augustine would have written.
I like to think that intelligent beings can find something of use even in barbarous Latin. This project will, I hope, fill a lack.
To give an idea of what I am talking about, go to the following webpage
http://archive.org/stream/sanctiirenaei ... 8/mode/2up
for the original text, and compare it to the scanned text below:
[8]1. DICUNT esse quendam in invisibilibus, et inenarrabilibus alitudinibue perfectum Aeonem, qui ante fuit. Hunc autem et Proarchen, et Propatora, et Bython vocant: esse autem illum invisibilem, et quem nulla res capere possit. Cum autem a nullo caperetur, et esset invisibilis, sempiternus, et ingenitus, in silentio et in quiete multa fuisse, in immensis aeonibus. Cum
[9]
ipso autem fuisse et Ennoean, quam etiam Charm, et Sigen vocant: et aliquando voluisse a semetipso emittere hunc Bythum initium omnium, et velut semen prolationem hanc praemitti voluit, et eam deposuisse quasi in vulva ejus, que cum eo erat, Sige. Hanc autem suscepisse semen hoc, et praegnantem factam generasse Nun, similem et aequalem ei, qui emiserat, et solum capientem magnitudinem Patris. Nun autem hunc, et Unigenitum vocant, et Patrem, et Initium omnium. Una autem cum eo emissam Veritatem, et hanc esse primam et primogenitam Pythagoricam quatemationem, quam et radicem omnium dicunt. Est enim Bythus et Sige, deinde Nus et ...
If I understood Latin grammar better maybe I might attempt it, but as it is all I see is word salad. I need outside help to do this right.
Volume one contains a lengthy introduction to ancient Heresies, which is ignored, and the first two of the five books. There are 125 pages of Latin text in 57,942 words. Volume two, containing books three to five, contains 248 pages of Latin text and 93,816 words.