Little Nemo Project

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bedwere
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Little Nemo Project

Post by bedwere »

After Ben-Hur, I decided to translate Little Nemo by Winsor McCay into Latin and Greek. The art of McCay is outstanding and my translation cannot match the beauty of the drawings. I'll be happy if, with your help, major blunders are avoided.
As usual, translations and new images are offered with the Creative Commons license, which basically means do whatever you want with them.

I'm getting the strips from this site: http://www.comicstriplibrary.org

Here are the pages completed so far:

Little Nemo 1905-00-00

Thank you for your corrections, suggestions, etc.!

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Re: Little Nemo Project

Post by daivid »

McCay's images do indeed make this an ideal subject for translation. Can I ask what difficulty level are you aiming at?
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bedwere
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Re: Little Nemo Project

Post by bedwere »

Hi Daivid,

I try to write correctly and not too clumsily. I guess a student that has gone through Reading Greek should be
able to understand it all. I won't be able to translate anything more before August 6 due to my trips. However, I was thinking of picking up another story. Although McCay is a superb artist, a more traditional story has more appeal for me at least. Plus I would be able to finish it in my lifetime! :D But I may do more pages of Nemo from time to time.

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Re: Little Nemo Project

Post by daivid »

bedwere wrote:Hi Daivid,

I try to write correctly and not too clumsily. I guess a student that has gone through Reading Greek should be
able to understand it all.
If you simply mean the grammar covered by Reading Greek is assumed then that is not so difficult.
However, the readings for "Reading Greek" end with unadapted Herodotus and Homer so if you mean that the difficulty level is comparable you are setting the bar quite high IMO
bedwere wrote: I won't be able to translate anything more before August 6 due to my trips. However, I was thinking of picking up another story. Although McCay is a superb artist, a more traditional story has more appeal for me at least. Plus I would be able to finish it in my lifetime! :D But I may do more pages of Nemo from time to time.
What is possible in reality is a great help when using context as a help to the meaning. Hence, a story based on a dream is a lot harder though the drawings do help with that. I look forward to whatever you try next.
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Re: Little Nemo Project

Post by mwh »

daivid,
In the meantime, did you try bedwere’s BenHur grecization? You won't approve of the fake history, but his Greek is syntactically simple, and the meaning of words you don’t know can be inferred from the pics (your guru Krashen would have nothing against that) if you refuse to make use of the original English.
And his rewrites of the Aesop fables—or better, the originals themselves, which he links to—should be comprehensible enough, since much of the vocabulary can be successfully guessed at. If you have look up the occasional word, what’s wrong with that? (Please don’t tell me.)
There too you have crude Christianizing to contend with, thanks to Markos' interventions, but you can ignore that.

But I suspect these don't meet your imagined requirements either.

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Re: Little Nemo Project

Post by daivid »

mwh wrote:daivid,
In the meantime, did you try bedwere’s BenHur grecization? You won't approve of the fake history, but his Greek is syntactically simple, and the meaning of words you don’t know can be inferred from the pics (your guru Krashen would have nothing against that) if you refuse to make use of the original English.
And his rewrites of the Aesop fables—or better, the originals themselves, which he links to—should be comprehensible enough, since much of the vocabulary can be successfully guessed at. If you have look up the occasional word, what’s wrong with that? (Please don’t tell me.)
There too you have crude Christianizing to contend with, thanks to Markos' interventions, but you can ignore that.

But I suspect these don't meet your imagined requirements either.
I gave up the first time because it was too hard. I have given it another go today and it is still very hard but maybe it will get easier now I've got through the intro.

I don't think I have ever rejected something written in Ancient Greek because it lacked historical accuracy. Unless you mean Herodotus in which case I was merely saying he should not be regarded as a historian. Ben Hur is fiction so if it clashes with history that in no way affects its value as a learning text.

(I do have a problem with bad history in Holywood films but I judge them to a higher standard).

Ben Hur is explicitly a story with a Christian message - I don't think Markos influenced that.

All in all, whether I persevere with Bedvere's comic depends solely whether or not I find it too difficult for me - nothing else.
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