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Questions about Ancient Greek

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30 March 2008 22:46  

Urunghai
Number of messages: 464
So Ancient Greek has been added recently, and I'm very happy with that.

The problem is a lot of people are asking for translations in Ancient Greek, even though there are no words in this language for what they want to see translated; neologisms like "car" and stuff.
What do I have to do? Report them as untranslatable?

I know there are many kinds of Ancient Greek, the one more ancient than the other, but I try to use the "standard" for schools (Sophocles, Homer, Xenophon, ...); the Greek I'm learning.
Sometimes I do have the feeling that, because there is no expert, it doesn't really matter what I am doing. Nobody to check my translations.

Is there somebody else of the Cucumers who has some basic notions of Ancient Greek?

Thanks
Uru

 

4 April 2008 11:57  

Urunghai
Number of messages: 464
So, at the moment I got 20 more Ancient Greek requests pending.
 

2 May 2008 13:13  

irini
Number of messages: 849
Better late than never eh? Sorry, I hadn't seen the topic.
Now I don't know when there will be an expert for ancient Greek but when it comes to neologisms, the whole thing is a bit tricky. Since there's no expert I am not sure what's this site's take on the matter.
For the time being, you could use modern Greek equivalents with a little note saying that i.e. there were no cars way back then and you have therefore "borrowed" the term from Modern Greek. Quite often the Modern Greek term is actually formed by using Ancient Greek elements so the word fits in nicely.

Check the following link, it may help you (I am sure there are others but I always found this site interesting )

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~jc210/vocabulary.htm
 

2 May 2008 21:32  

Urunghai
Number of messages: 464
Thanks Irini, I'll use autokinètos for a car from now on ^^
I'll try to translate most of them, with or without an expert I guess...
 

14 May 2008 21:55  

Spasty
Number of messages: 48
Using the standard is probably the best thing to do. If they want a specific time period or location or whatever (sorry, I'm unfamiliar with Greek pretty much as a whole, other than the alphabet), then they'll mention it in the comments portion. At least, that's what people do with Arabic.

As for "untranslatable" words, I'd use the modern equivalent in quotes and explain in the comments field.
 
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