Dear readers: Thank you so much for sticking
with me through my sporadic posting. I haven't been updating much lately
because I've been working on a book, and hope to have it published within the
next few months.
I don't think I've mentioned it here before,
but I'm an active member of the spoken Latin movement. There are Latin
conversation groups, Latin speaking conventions, and spoken Latin classes all
across the country and around the world (enabled by the internet, an excellent
means for connecting with people who have esoteric interests). As part of this
movement, you can find various books--usually children's books--translated into
Latin. The Harry Potter translations are fairly
famous, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid came out quite recently,
but a lot of classic children's stories have been translated too, like Winnie the Pooh and The Little Prince, to say nothing of Terry
Tunberg's exceptional translations of Dr. Seuss stories.
To this I intend to add a Latin translation
of Oscar Wilde's children's stories: “The Happy Prince,” “The Nightingale and
the Rose,” “The Selfish Giant,” and “The Devoted Friend.” If you're unfamiliar
with the stories, you can find them here. The stories are lively with Wilde’s signature wit;
they feature biting irony, poignant lessons, and engaging drama for all the
characters. As a further advantage regarding Latin translation, they for the
most part dodge non-classical technical vocabulary, minimizing the need for
neologisms and relying on vocabulary that Latin speakers might naturally
encounter in the course of reading traditional texts.
I'm very excited about all of this. Watch
this space for more details; I’ll certainly be posting a sample when the
editing process is done. I’ve already started a second collection of Wilde
stories, so we’ll see how fast I can get that off the ground. And I’ll write up
some more mythology when I can. Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment