Guidelines for Translators
Translating texts: guidelines by Francesca Bigi
Appendices of translated common abbreviations like Keppie’s and glossaries like Andreu Pintado’s may very well be the starting point of a discussion on an EAGLE vocabulary, which could ideally form the core of the expected Deliverable on Translations.
Too fragmentary parts of an otherwise translatable texts can also be left aside and properly signalled with diacritic signs.
Round brackets conventionally used for resolving an abbreviated word should never appear in the translation.
Square brackets should also be omitted when the whole text is re- stored to full intelligibility and/or the proposed integrations are marked by the editor as certain.
In such cases the omitted words are hardly ever integrated by the editor, but in order to render the original meaning properly, the translator should instead add their correspondant. The insertion should be easily detectable and thus properly marked within round brackets.
Lost portions devoid of integration, either at the end or at any other point of the inscription, should be signalled like in original text by means of [...] or [---] and never with ....
The tendency to ’Italianize’ applies also to the cognomina ex virtute, thus Germanicus, Parthicus and similar are rendered with Germanico and Partico, as opposed the English ’victor over the Germans’ or ’victor in Parthia’. This is one of those cases when the less lapidary translation is certainly to be preferred: ’victor over the Germans’ fully renders the meaning of the Latin expression and annihilates the risk of misinterpre- tation. Note that for an Italian non-specialist reader Germanico means of German origin.
Use the modern word closest to Latin and have it followed by its sinthetical explanation: flamine (sacerdote), sufeta (magistrato locale), etc.
tribuniciae potestates, imperial salutations and the already mentioned cognomina ex virtute, should again be translated in a manner that allows the reader to grasp the meaning, thus imperator X should be rendered with ’acclamato imperatore per la decima volta’ (acclaimed emperor for the tenth time) e not simply ’imperatore per la decima volta’ (emperor for the tenth time).
U. Gehn that we should ideally be able to mark up these expressions like it is done in a Wikipedia page, so that they could be linked to an external resource which would allow further explanations, should the reader wish them.
