Latin translation and some one-off things

For the last couple of weeks I have been investigating various aspects of translation, partly as preparation for the latin course I am taking in Oxford, and partly due to the Latin translation component that there might be in my current PhD plans. One area that I have been looking at are software translation programmes and I have been testing a couple on Jardine's book on Kepler's Defence of Tycho against Ursus which has the original latin text before his tranlation. As one might expect, results have been somewhat mixed. Some sentences are translated quite well by the programmes, but some have been almost unrecognisable. This might suggest that my plans are subject to more difficulties that I had perhaps imagined?

But according to Linda, who is afterall fluent in German and pretty good at Latin, this is not an uncommon aspect of translation. Many sentences and phrases are cultural dependent and word-for-word translation is often misleading. Indeed, she thought that perhaps 90% of all translation effort concerns perhaps 10% of the text being translated, a claim I have seen expressed elsewhere as well. So perhaps all is not lost. Maybe I would be able to get the gist of a piece, and would need to use a "professional" for just a portion of it. And of course Oxford has plenty such professionals.

I have also been reading two other books on this subject that I acquired a couple of weeks ago - George Steiner's After Babel and Umberto Eco's Mouse or Rat. Steiner's is the longer and perhaps more theoretical of the two - it is certainly the more polemic, and has chapter headings containing the words "theory" and "hermeneutics". By contrast, Eco's book is a bit easier going, mainly as it is based on examples from his own works. These are full of Italian literary references and present substantial difficulties for his translators. Perhaps the message of both books is that there is less science and more art to a good translation. Both books have provided support to my thoughts on my projects, rather than put me off - which is a good thing I reckon.
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On other matters, Linda has been suffering from an extremely sore eye for the past few days. After a trip to the opticians, we have had a trip to the eye hospital at John Radcliffe where it turns out that Linda does have some sort of infection and has been prescribed a 6 week course in extremely strong eye drops to be taken once every hour for the first few days, then every two hours for the next week and so on. I am very concerned about things related to eyes - presumably due to reading being such a big part of my life.

While we were in Oxford, I was able to pick up my newly-framed Richard Long picture. This is actually the leaflet from the exhibition in London that I went to a month or so back. It unfolds into a large square but with the fold lines marking the edges of small pictures. It is quite a large picture and I had it framed by the guy who runs the picture stand at the weekly market at Gloucester Green. £60, which was somewhat less than the shocking £200 from the other place we use in Oxford. It now hangs in the main lounge, replacing the two photos I had framed recently. I am very pleased with it indeed.