Help with Greek please

[AlexBell]

I've attached two jpg images produced from Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot, published around 1850. One shows a Greek couplet set off from the English text, and the other a Greek phrase embedded in the text.

Can anyone translate them for me please?

[underscore]

It doesn't always work but for this kind of things
(sentences in a non latin alphabet like greek or cyrillic) i found useful
the google translate app on my android smartphone.
You can simply take a picture and fed it to google translate.

[doubleshuffle]

The first one is from Sophocles' Philoctetes. The Loeb translation translates it like this: "But—it is a pleasure to acquire a possession by a victory—bring yourself to do it, and in due course we shall be shown to have been in the right."
https://www.loebclassics.com/view/so...LCL021.265.xml

I'm sure there are more poetic translations out there. It's line 81f.

Oh, and from the Loeb page (and now from this post as well) you can copy the Greek to incorporate in your text, to save you the trouble of piecing it all together character by character:

ἀλλ᾿ ἡδὺ γάρ τι κτῆμα τῆς νίκης λαβεῖν,
τόλμα· δίκαιοι δ᾿ αὖθις ἐκφανούμεθα.

[doubleshuffle]

The second bit - δεινόν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν - is also from Sophocles, Electra l. 770. Loeb doesn't give me access anymore (it seems you can only view two or three pages there for free).

Wikisource has a translation from 1878 by a guy called Plumptre. The line that starts with your phrase and the next one read like this there:

Wondrous and strange the force of motherhood!⁠
Though wronged, a mother cannot hate her children.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Trage..._1878)/Electra

The full two lines in Greek go like this:

δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν· οὐδὲ γὰρ κακῶς
πάσχοντι μῖσος ὧν τέκῃ προσγίγνεται.

https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%9...BA%CE%BB%CE%AE)


What I can't help you with is which bit in English translates the first four words of the Greek...

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by underscore

It doesn't always work but for this kind of things
(sentences in a non latin alphabet like greek or cyrillic) i found useful
the google translate app on my android smartphone.
You can simply take a picture and fed it to google translate.

Thanks so much. I didn't know one could feed it into Google translate.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

The first one is from Sophocles' Philoctetes. The Loeb translation translates it like this: "But—it is a pleasure to acquire a possession by a victory—bring yourself to do it, and in due course we shall be shown to have been in the right."
https://www.loebclassics.com/view/so...LCL021.265.xml

I'm sure there are more poetic translations out there. It's line 81f.

Oh, and from the Loeb page (and now from this post as well) you can copy the Greek to incorporate in your text, to save you the trouble of piecing it all together character by character:

ἀλλ᾿ ἡδὺ γάρ τι κτῆμα τῆς νίκης λαβεῖν,
τόλμα· δίκαιοι δ᾿ αὖθις ἐκφανούμεθα.

Thanks for your help. I have put this text in the ebook as a jpg image.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

The second bit - δεινόν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν - is also from Sophocles, Electra l. 770. Loeb doesn't give me access anymore (it seems you can only view two or three pages there for free).

Wikisource has a translation from 1878 by a guy called Plumptre. The line that starts with your phrase and the next one read like this there:

Wondrous and strange the force of motherhood!⁠
Though wronged, a mother cannot hate her children.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Trage..._1878)/Electra

The full two lines in Greek go like this:

δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν· οὐδὲ γὰρ κακῶς
πάσχοντι μῖσος ὧν τέκῃ προσγίγνεται.

https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%9...BA%CE%BB%CE%AE)


What I can't help you with is which bit in English translates the first four words of the Greek...

Thanks again. I'll put in the whole translation, with a note to the effect that the phrase is the start of a longer statement.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks for your help. I have put this text in the ebook as a jpg image.

Please stick with actual Unicode Greek characters instead of images.

It is also good practice to also wrap the text with something like this:

<span class="greek" lang="grc" xml:lang="grc">ἀλλ᾿ ἡδὺ γάρ τι κτῆμα τῆς νίκης λαβεῖν, τόλμα· δίκαιοι δ᾿ αὖθις ἐκφανούμεθα.</span>

I went into detail into reasons why in Post #20 and #22 of "Problem with inline image" (example images included).

The gist is that images of text are:

• Not Accessible
  • Not readable by TTS
  • Not copy/pastable
  • Not able to be looking up by dictionary (Greek->English one)
• Don't follow user preferences
  • Color, font, font size, [...]

And if you MUST use images of text, please save as PNG instead of JPG.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Please stick with actual Unicode Greek characters instead of images.

It is also good practice to also wrap the text with something like this:



I went into detail into reasons why in Post #20 and #22 of "Problem with inline image" (example images included).

The gist is that images of text are:

• Not Accessible
  • Not readable by TTS
  • Not copy/pastable
  • Not able to be looking up by dictionary (Greek->English one)
• Don't follow user preferences
  • Color, font, font size, [...]

And if you MUST use images of text, please save as PNG instead of JPG.

Thanks for your suggestions. The problem is that I have only minimal skills in ebook design, and simply don't know how to do what you are suggesting, or how to find out.

I think I have three options so far: to include the Greek couplet as an image, to replace the Greek text with the English translation, or to leave the book for someone else to do.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I think I have three options so far: to include the Greek couplet as an image, to replace the Greek text with the English translation, or to leave the book for someone else to do.

You've missed the most obvious option suggested by Tex2002ans: simply keep the Greek original text.

<span title="Greek: deinón tò tíktein estin" class="greek" lang="grc" xml:lang="grc">δεινόν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστἰν</span>

BTW, Faded Page has etexts of both volumes with pictures and embedded page numbers.

Scenes of Clerical Life, Vol. I
Scenes of Clerical Life, Vol. II

[doubleshuffle]

What does this bit in your code do, Doitsu?

title="Greek: deinón tò tíktein estin"

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

You've missed the most obvious option suggested by Tex2002ans: simply keep the Greek original text.

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

What does this bit in your code do, Doitsu?

title="Greek: deinón tò tíktein estin"

Using the title attribute gives a tooltip when you hover over the text.

You can read more about it in these two sections on the Mozilla Developer site or the HTML 5.2 spec.

... I probably wouldn't use it in the case of the Greek text (because or poor support on non-mouse devices), but it wouldn't hurt.

[underscore]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks so much. I didn't know one could feed it into Google translate.

welcome.
probably the translation sucks (or maybe there is no ancient greek) but the characters get recognized for reporting in Unicode.
It's like me seeing something written in Arabic, or in Armenian, or in Chinese.
There is no way on earth i can input that on a computer (to ask for help) without using a picture/ocr system.